Alan Shearer claims he loved the pressure of being the world’s most expensive footballer. In summer 1996, one month after winning the Golden Boot at Euro 96, Shearer completed a world-record transfer to Newcastle United.
Sir John Hall forked out an unprecedented £15million to bring the then 26-year-old Geordie home - having left the city 10 years earlier to join Southampton. The Magpies’ all-time leading goal scorer was leaving a successful Blackburn side that had won the title one year earlier but the lure of scoring goals for his boyhood club was too much to turn down.
New calculations by the Athletic have converted the price of Premier League transfer fees from yesteryear into today’s money. A league table has Shearer placed at the top, adjusting his transfer fee to £222million in the modern-day market. For context, the current world-record is the £198million PSG paid Barcelona for Brazilian superstar Neymar in 2017.
While some players struggle to perform following a big-money move due to pressure, Shearer believes returning to Tyneside as the world’s most expensive player filled him with pride.- “When the day came in late July 1996 to say my goodbyes, I walked into the training ground at Blackburn Rovers,” he wrote in the Athletic. “I was going home to Newcastle United, the team I’d supported as a kid, and they were buying me for a world-record fee.
“I distinctly remember Tim Sherwood, our skipper, asking me how much for and me telling him it was £15 million. He stared at me for a while and then said, ‘Jesus. No pressure there, then!’ I couldn’t do anything apart from laugh. The really funny thing is that I never felt that pressure. Not once. Not at all.
“You often hear or read about players being weighed down by their price tag after a move, about them struggling to live up to it, but although it did feel like a ridiculous, obscene amount of money for a club to spend on me (or on anybody) it wasn’t a burden. It made me feel extremely proud, excited, special, 10 feet tall. Truth be told, I absolutely loved it.”
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