5 world-class footballers who chose romantic transfers instead of big contracts

Money is a huge motivator for many elite footballers – although some excellent players have eschewed big contracts in favour of more romantic transfers.

Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson is the latest example; the Reds’ keeper has turned down a move to Saudi Arabia and it is nice to see an elite footballer make a decision of the heart rather than one of the moolah.

We’ve explored some more romantic transfers—moves where the player in question chose love over money—and found ourselves feeling all fuzzy and warm inside.

Angel Di Maria

There was little fanfare when Di Maria arrived in Lisbon in July 2007. Back in Perdriel, Argentina, however, this was big news.

He and his sisters had grown up helping out his parents with their work in a coal yard. When Benfica signed the 19-year-old winger from his boyhood club Rosario in 2007, Angel asked his father to stop working, and bought his family a house.

Di Maria was signed as a replacement for Simao—the club captain who had just left Benfica for Atletico Madrid. He would spend three short seasons in Lisbon, topping the Primeira Liga assist charts in his final season with the club before Real Madrid got their wallet out.

A glittering career followed, which saw Di Maria take in Madrid, Manchester, Paris, and Turin, seven domestic league titles, a Champions League winners medal, and Olympic gold medal, a World Cup winners medal, a couple Copa Americas, a bunch of domestic cups etc. etc. etc.

When his Juventus contract expired at the end of the 2022-23 season, he could 100% have secured himself a lucrative move to the emerging Saudi Pro League or MLS. No doubt about it. He’s still mustard.

But Di Maria instead decided to go back to Benfica—back to the club that helped raise he and his family out of the coal yards of Perdriel, for a swansong. 

In fact, the 2023-24 season was one of the most productive of Di Maria’s career in terms of numbers. He’s in Lisbon for at least one more season. Long may it continue.

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the 20 footballers with the highest accumulated transfer fees?

Daniele De Rossi

De Rossi spent literally 18 years with Roma. There were children born in the UK when De Rossi debuted for Roma, who could just about legally drink alcohol by the time he left.

He’s managing the Giallorossi these days, possibly in an attempt to usurp Francesco Totti as the modern-day Emperor of Rome, and that’s lovely, but Daniele spent his whole loyal-as-f*ck playing career harbouring a secret desire. Daniele wanted to play for Boca Juniors.

There was something about the club, the fans, the stadium, the kit… All of it. We can sympathise with that. So, when his final contract at Roma expired in 2019, off he went to La Boca via some deal-brokering from his old teammate Nicolas Burdisso, to live out his dream.

De Rossi did six months out in Buenos Aires before retiring from football. You’ve got to respect it. As another great Roman Emperor once said, Memento Mori.

Carlos Tevez

We almost didn’t include this one, but how could we not? Tevez has had three separate spells at Boca Juniors: The first was at the very beginning of his professional career, graduating from their academy and forcing his way into the first team as a boy wonder, scoring goals for fun.

The second came after his big European adventure. First, there was the move to Corinthians in Brazil, where he scored even more goals, then made the big jump across the pond via a very dodgy transfer to Alan Pardew’s West Ham United alongside Javier Mascherano.

Manchester United, Manchester City, and Juventus followed, and so did a whole heap of trophies and individual honours. Tevez truly was one of the best strikers on Earth in his prime.

In 2015, Tevez was still just 31 years old when he decided to leave Juventus to return to his beloved Boca Juniors, still close to the peak of his powers. This first beautiful reunion lasted just one season, as Tevez f*cked off to Shanghai for a big old payday in China.

The Argentine spent a couple of years in China raking in money and barely playing football, before once more returning to La Boca, where he spent three more seasons putting balls in nets before retiring.

It’s a lovely story, sort of.

READ NEXT: 5 legendary footballers we can’t believe never commanded a transfer fee: Messi, Raul…

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every player that broke the Premier League transfer record?

Alan Shearer

Shearer’s arrival on the scene was emphatic. At just 17 years old, he was thrust into the Southampton first team and smashed in a trio of goals in his first five games in the old First Division (now the Premier League).

The following season he scored exactly zero goals in ten games, and the following two seasons weren’t loads better. He reached double figures in 1991-92, and then, at the dawn of the Premier League, Blackburn Rovers took a punt on this promising Geordie striker.

Shearer was cooking, now. The goals began to flow, and they wouldn’t stop. In his third season at Rovers, he won the Premier League with King Kenny Dalglish at the helm, and after his fourth and final season in Lancashire, Manchester United and Alex Ferguson came a-knocking.

And it wasn’t just Manchester United—Real Madrid wanted Big Al, too. The Red Devils came closest to securing a signature. Ferguson met Shearer and the talks went well, then King Kevin Keegan (kings everywhere you look in this story) got in touch with the boy from Wallsend.

Keegan had been Shearer’s childhood hero—a lifelong Newcastle fan—and Shearer decided to go home to Tyneside rather than join the biggest club in the country or the famous Los Blancos.

Granted, the transfer fee was a record at the time—£15million was an awful lot of money in 1996—but Manchester United and Real Madrid both had healthier bank accounts than the Magpies and could have paid the big number 9 pretty much whatever he wanted.

Shearer instead chose to go back home and stay there for the rest of his career.

Alexis Sanchez

Udinese have a knack for bringing talented youngsters and future superstars to Serie A—Roberto Sensini, Rodrigo de Paul, Bruno Fernandes, and Cristian Zapata all came to the big time via Udinese.

In 2008, Chilean fullback Mauricio Isla was plying his trade with Le Zebrette, and another Chilean was about to join him.

Alexis Sanchez came to Europe after breaking through at Colo-Colo in his native Chile. It was at Udinese where he really made his name on this side of the Atlantic, though.

The club must mean an awful lot to him, because after a career that sent him to Barcelona, Arsenal, Manchester United, Inter Milan (twice), and Marseille, arguably Chile’s greatest-ever footballer has decided to return to Udine at the age of 35.

There is absolutely no way on God’s green Earth that Udinese are paying Alexis as much as he’d be making at almost any other relatively large club in Europe, or essentially any club in Saudi Arabia.

Udinese avoided relegation by a mere two points in 2023-24, and will have to improve if they’re going to climb a little further up the table this season.

Alexis could be the player to set an example to the rest of the team whilst scoring the goals that propel them away from the sucking chasm of Serie B.