The Premier League is generally considered to be the best and most competitive football division in the world, and many players work for their whole careers to secure a move to the English top flight.
However, for some of the game's most valuable stars, the league is not quite the right fit, leading them to look for a transfer abroad.
In the case of Luis Diaz, it has been reported that Liverpool were unwilling to offer him a new contract on improved terms, and as a result, he asked the Reds to facilitate a move to Bayern Munich.
Arne Slot's champions pocketed an impressive £65.5m from the deal, a sum that is sure to help with the Merseysiders' uncharacteristically large transfer outlay this summer.
Here, Sports Mole ranks the top 10 most expensive Premier League exits of all time, only including players that have left for a foreign club.
Making nets ripple for fun in an Everton shirt was not a sign of things to come for Romelu Lukaku at the Theatre of Dreams, and while it would be unjust to label him a 'flop', the board had no qualms about letting him leave for Inter Milan after just two seasons.
Working under the wing of Conte breathed new life into Lukaku's career, so much so that erstwhile team Chelsea astonishingly came calling again in 2021, when he commanded a £97.5m fee to leave San Siro.
Similarly to Di Maria, though, Lukaku burnt some bridges with fans early doors by admitting that he wanted to go back to Italy only a few months after rejoining Chelsea, who granted his wish with successive loans to Inter and Roma before selling him to Napoli permanently.
Unearthed by River Plate and poached by Pep Guardiola, Julian Alvarez went from strength to strength in a Manchester City shirt, culminating in a 19-goal and 13-assist haul across all competitions in the 2023-24 campaign.
The Argentine initially thrived in the absence of the injured Kevin De Bruyne, but the prospect of another season on the fringes convinced World Cup and Copa America champion Alvarez that his long-term future did not belong at the Etihad.
Despite some concern that an Atletico-Chelsea quarrel over the Conor Gallagher and Samu Omorodion deals could jeopardise a switch, Alvarez's move to the Spanish capital was confirmed with an ode to Spider-Man, a character he has long been associated with.
Departing for the exact same fee as Atletico-bound Alvarez, Jhon Duran decided that he was done playing backup to Ollie Watkins at Villa Park under Unai Emery, who seldom gave the South American an opportunity to impress from the first whistle.
That was in spite of Duran registering 12 goals in 30 games for the Lions during the first half of the season, including three Champions League strikes, most notably the only goal in a famous 1-0 win over Bayern Munich.
However, with Emery refusing to budge on his one-striker setup, Duran flew to the Middle East in search of regular football in January 2025, boosting Villa's coffers by nearly £65m in the process.
7. Luis Diaz (Liverpool to Bayern Munich | £65.5m | 2025)
Liverpool's Luis Diaz celebrates scoring on April 27, 2025
Brought to the club in January 2022 in the midst of a quadruple chase, Luis Diaz started strongly at Liverpool but never quite reached the potential that his first few months at the club suggested he had.
To be fair to the Colombian winger, he was always a strong dribbler and hard worker on the left wing for the Reds, and he was unfortunately impacted by a knee injury in 2022-23 that saw him miss 35 matches for club and country.
Regardless, after winning the Premier League together in 2024-25, the Merseysiders parted ways amicably with Diaz for £65.5m, a fee that would go some way to funding their significant summer transfer business.
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The 2013-14 season should have ended with Luis Suarez and his Liverpool teammates basking in Premier League glory; instead, the South American was memorably left inconsolable after the Reds threw their title hopes into the gutter against Crystal Palace.
After Steven Gerrard swatted the cameras out of Suarez's face, Barcelona ushered the striker to Camp Nou for a little under £70m, and the Uruguayan would go on to form the fearsome MSN partnership, sandwiched in between the great Lionel Messi and Neymar.
Having fulfilled his Champions League dream and bulged many a net for Barcelona, Suarez jumped ship for Atletico in 2020 when he was deemed surplus to requirements, and seven years on from his tears of Premier League agony, happy emotions took over when he helped Diego Simeone's side win the 2020-21 La Liga title.
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A transfer that needs no pre-amble, Cristiano Ronaldo held the honour of being the most expensive player on the planet when he was unveiled as Real Madrid's £80m Galactico signing in 2009, where he had rather large boots to fill in the shape of Raul.
Four-hundred and thirty-eight appearances and 450 goals later, the Portugal powerhouse cemented his status as the greatest player to ever pull on the iconic white shirt, before trying his hand at Serie A football with Juventus and enduring a more forgettable second Old Trafford spell.
Once his bridges with Erik ten Hag were burned, Ronaldo began raking in the money and the goals in the Saudi Pro League with Al-Nassr, albeit while also replicating his tears of Euro 2004 at the 2024 edition after his infamous penalty miss versus Slovenia.
4. Harry Kane (Tottenham Hotspur to Bayern Munich | £81.2m | 2023)
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Try as he might with a glut of Tottenham Hotspur goals - 280 to be exact - Kane's missions to end the Lilywhites' torturous trophyless streak were fruitless year after year, culminating in Daniel Levy begrudgingly sanctioning his exit to Bayern Munich for a little over £80m in 2023.
However, Kane brought the silverware curse with him to Bavaria, where despite breaking records for fun with 44 goals in his debut campaign, Bayern Munich's perpetual reign of Bundesliga supremacy ended at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen.
A penny for Kane's thoughts as Bayern were condemned to an unforeseen trophyless campaign before taking home his second Euros runners-up medal, but the England captain finally got his hands on an elusive team honour in the 2024-25 Bundesliga.
3. Gareth Bale (Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid | £86.4m | 2013)
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Before Kane there was Gareth Bale, who akin to a certain Arjen Robben proved almost impossible to stop when cutting inside from the right and unleashing a thunderbolt with his wand of a left foot in the 2012-13 campaign.
Real had no qualms about paying north of £85m for the Welshman's signature, but even though he broke the 100-goal barrier at the Bernabeu, speculation surrounding an exit reared its ugly head year after year.
Bale did eventually make a brief return to North London in the COVID-19 era of 2020-21 - whether Kane will ever follow suit remains to be seen - before a short stint in MLS and his retirement at the beginning of 2023.
2. Eden Hazard (Chelsea to Real Madrid | £103.3m | 2019)
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Hailed as the best winger in the Premier League and arguably one of the best wide men in the world during his Chelsea heyday, a prime Eden Hazard was tipped to terrorise La Liga backlines when he swapped West London for the Spanish capital in 2019.
However, the ex-Belgium international is now in the conversation for one of the worst transfers of all time, chalking up a return of just seven goals and 12 assists in 76 matches for Los Blancos, who cut their nine-figure losses and terminated his contract in 2023.
Hazard has since made an emotional return to the Stamford Bridge turf, evoking nostalgia with a fine free kick in the 2024 edition of Soccer Aid but also being the victim of a brilliantly-timed tackle by TV hard-man Danny Dyer.
1. Philippe Coutinho (Liverpool to Barcelona | £115.5m | 2018)
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Still the most expensive player to move from a Premier League club to a foreign rival, Philippe Coutinho was starting to be outshone by the likes of Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane when Liverpool received a £115.5m cheque from Barcelona for his services.
While the Brazilian did not plunge to Hazard's levels of La Liga ignominy, he failed to do his nine-figure price tag justice either and memorably helped eliminate his parent club from the Champions League in 2020, needing just 15 minutes to score twice and set up another goal in an 8-2 crushing while at Bayern Munich.
Barcelona made a loss of close to £100m on Coutinho, who failed to kick on at Aston Villa despite a promising start and has now returned to his homeland, where he may potentially see out the last knockings of his career.
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