Take a look at the three most successful free buys in history, with Italian League side Juventus being one of the luckiest teams from this transfer tactic.

In this increasingly modern era of football, spending billions of money on quality players is very common.

Even clubs like Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain dare to pour fantastic funds to bring in their coveted star players.

In this 21/22 season, for example, Manchester City are not afraid to pay 100 million euros to bring Jack Grealish from Aston Villa.

This amount also makes Manchester City break the record as the most expensive transfer of an English player in history.

The purchase of Jack Grealish beat Manchester United’s transfer when he signed Harry Maguire for 87 million euros from Leicester City in 2019.

But apart from the transfer saga, in recent seasons the trend of bringing in high quality players for free has also been on the rise.

Coupled with the club’s difficult financial conditions after the pandemic, many European teams chose to bring in players whose contracts had expired, aka free transfers to save expenses.

Interestingly, these players who are free transfers do not always have poor quality and old age.

Even in the current millennial era, there are three free purchases that are considered successful and were able to help their new team win a number of titles.

So who are these players? In more detail, here we try to summarize and review:

Paul Pogba
The first name is Paul Pogba. The player moved to Italian League giants Juventus for free before moving back to Manchester United for a transfer fee of 89 million euros.

Pogba transformed into one of the best midfielders in the world when he was in uniform with Juventus. This French man has the ability to attack and defend equally well.

During his time playing for the Old Lady, the midfielder managed to make 125 appearances and helped his team reach the Champions League final in the 2015 season.

Pogba also managed to win 4 Serie A titles, 2 Coppa Italia and 2 Supercoppa Italia. With this fantastic achievement, he made it into the list of the world’s best players in 2014.

Andrea Pirlo
Next is Andrea Pirlo. Pirlo’s departure from AC Milan to Juventus is arguably the beginning of the Rossoneri’s slump to date.

At the time of his move, Andrea Pirlo was 32 years old and was considered to have lost his golden age to guard AC Milan’s midfield.

However, after leaving for Juventus, Pirlo managed to prove himself that he was not finished and transformed into one of the best midfielders in the Italian League.

During his time with Juventus, Andrea Pirlo has played more than 100 matches with 19 goals and 38 assists.

He also managed to help Juventus win 4 Serie A titles, 1 Coppa Italia and 2 Italian Super Cups during his career in the city of Turin.

Based on these statistics. no wonder the signing of Andrea Pirlo made it into the list of the most successful free buys in history.

Robert Lewandowski
The most successful free purchase in recent history was the move of Robert Lewandowski to the German League giants, Bayern Munich in the summer of 2014.

His departure to a rival club did give the fans hatred, especially his former club, Borussia Dortmund.

However, this move has made him the best striker in the world to date.

During his uniform with Bayern Munich, the Polish national player was able to score 342 goals and provide 71 assists from a total of 372 matches.

Robert Lewandowski has also won many domestic titles to prestigious titles such as the European Champions League.

Not only that, Lewandowski also won the title of world’s best player in 2021 beating Lionel Messi.