Enzo Fernandez Becomes Premier League's Most Expensive Signing Ever in £125 Million Move from Chelsea to Manchester City

Deadline day deals, the ones that come down to the wire and end up rewriting the record books. That's exactly what happened with Enzo Fernandez, who left Chelsea for Manchester City in a deal worth £125 million (roughly 145 million euros), making him the most expensive signing in Premier League history, tied with what Liverpool paid for Alexander Isak just a year earlier.

The 2022 World Cup winner with Argentina is reuniting with Enzo Maresca, the coach with whom he already built a strong relationship at Chelsea before the Italian departed for City. It's no coincidence that the midfielder chose this particular destination: the connection between the two went back a while, and once the opportunity arose, everything moved quickly in the market's final hours.

What stands out is that this isn't the first record Enzo Fernandez has broken in England. When he arrived from Benfica at Chelsea in January 2023, fresh off a dream World Cup, he had already cost £107 million, a fee that made plenty of noise at the time. Now, nearly three years later, he's back at the center of the conversation, this time as the most expensive signing in the history of English football.

A Ranking with South American Flavor

What's notable is that Chelsea, the club that sold Enzo, was also behind another of the league's biggest deals: the signing of Moises Caicedo, who arrived from Brighton for £115 million and remains, to this day, the most expensive transfer any Ecuadorian player has ever been part of. At the time, Chelsea and Liverpool were locked in a tug of war for the midfielder, but the personal agreement Caicedo had already reached with the Blues months earlier proved decisive.

Caicedo himself explained, once that saga was resolved, how he experienced those weeks of back and forth:

"Brighton made it clear I'd go to whichever club made the best offer, but I had already given my word."Moises Caicedo

The podium of the Premier League's most expensive signings also includes a few other names worth noting: Bradley Barcola joined Liverpool from PSG for £123 million, Morgan Rogers moved from Aston Villa to Chelsea for £117 million after the 2026 World Cup, and Elliot Anderson joined Manchester City itself for £116 million, becoming the first major reinforcement in a midfield that was later completed with the arrival of Enzo Fernandez.

Alexander Isak, the other name sharing the top of the ranking alongside the Argentine, had joined Liverpool after an enormous season at Newcastle, where he finished as the Premier League's second-highest scorer in 2024-25 with 23 goals and was a key piece in getting the Magpies into the Champions League. Two different stories, two different positions on the field, but the exact same figure marking the ceiling of the English market.