Stop it there: Gianluigi Buffon of Juventus is the most expensive goalkeeper in the world

Twenty years ago today Nigel Martyn became the first £1m goalkeeper in British football when he moved from Bristol Rovers to Crystal Palace. That this milestone was reached a full 10 years after the £1m mark was broken for an outfield player – Trevor Francis' move from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest – shows the yawning chasm which separates goalkeepers from the rest on the money markets.


No matter how many acrobatic saves they make and points they earn for their team, they rarely capture the imagination of those who wield the cheque book in quite the same way as the attacking midfielders or the strikers.


Only once has a goalkeeper moved for the kind of money that would normally be reserved for a 30-goals-a-season man. That was Gianluigi Buffon's €52m move – more than £30m - from Parma to Juventus in 2000. This was at a time when the world record for an outfield player was the £37m Real Madrid paid Barcelona for Luis Figo.


But Gigi stands head and shoulders above the rest in this regard. Angelo Peruzzi's £10.5 transfer from Inter to Lazio in 2000 is next on the scale before we get to the £9m Roy Keane's Sunderland paid Hearts for Craig Gordon in 2007.


Very quickly the transfer records for keepers drop down to the kind of money the likes of Rafa Benitez throw out in loose change for an outfield player.


Monaco received £7.8m from Manchester United for Fabien Barthez in 2000 while Gianluca Pagliuca's £7.5m move from Sampdoria to Inter in 1994 shows that the Italians are not shy about flashing the cash for the shot stoppers. Last year French upstart Hugo Lloris moved from Nice to Lyon for about the same figure.


Amazingly, the estimated £5.9m Manchester City paid Newcastle United for Shay Given does not even place the Donegal man in the top 10 goalkeeping transfers of all time. Although the fact that his contract was relatively close to expiring allowed Mark Hughes to get his man as a nice price.


Who will be next to break this particular transfer record? Perhaps Manuel Neuer at Schalke or the young Argentine Juan Pablo Carrizo at Lazio will be tempted to move for big money in the seasons to come. They both have time on their side. Either way, it looks like Buffon's record will stand for some time yet.