Transfer (association football) to Derby County for £24,000 in March 1949. The record was broken seven further times between 1949 and 1961, when Luis Suárez was sold by Barcelona to Inter Milan for £152,000, becoming the first ever player sold for more than £100,000. In 1968, Pietro Anastasi became the first £500,000 player when Juventus purchased him from Varese, which was followed seven years later with Giuseppe Savoldi becoming the first million pound player when he transferred from Bologna to Napoli. In English football, the first £1 million fee occurred in 1979, when Nottingham Forest signed striker Trevor Francis from Birmingham City. Later
Transfer (association football) by an English club came in the summer of 1988, when Tottenham Hotspur signed Paul Gascoigne from Newcastle United. Within weeks of Gascoigne's transfer, the national record was broken again when Tony Cottee moved from West Ham United to Everton for £2.2 million, and again shortly afterwards when Ian Rush returned to Liverpool from Juventus for £2.8 million. In the space of two months in the summer of 1992, three transfers broke the record, all by Italian clubs: Jean-Pierre Papin transferred from Marseille to Milan, becoming the world's first ever £10 million player. Almost immediately, rivals Juventus topped that with