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Manchester City signed Enzo Fernandez from Chelsea on deadline day for £125m, equalling the British transfer record set when Liverpool bought Alexander Isak from Newcastle last summer. The 25-year-old Argentina midfielder has signed a five-year deal and rejoins Enzo Maresca, his former manager at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea bought him from Benfica for £107m in February 2023, itself a British record at the time, and make an £18m profit.
Manchester, England: Enzo Fernandez arrived in England as a British record signing. Three and a half years later, he has left as one.
City confirmed the deal on Tuesday with a video posted on X. The fee matches the £125m Liverpool paid Newcastle for Isak on deadline day twelve months ago, and it is the second time Fernandez has been at the centre of a transfer that reset or equalled the British ceiling.
The Fee, and the One Before It
The first was in February 2023, when Chelsea paid Benfica £107m after a day of tangled negotiation that went to the wire — a fee that beat the £100m City themselves had spent on Jack Grealish in 2021. He had joined Benfica six months earlier for around £10m and won the Young Player award at the World Cup in between.
He signed an eight-and-a-half-year contract at Stamford Bridge then. He has left less than halfway through it, with a Conference League title and a Club World Cup to show for the stay.
Maresca Gets His Man
The driving force behind the move was the manager. Maresca worked with Fernandez at Chelsea before taking on the job of following Pep Guardiola at the Etihad, and wanted him from early in the summer.
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Chelsea set a deadline of 5pm on 14 August for anyone interested to formalise a bid, hoping to settle the matter before the season started. City let it pass, calculating that the player would still be available when the window closed. He was.
Fernandez had made his preference plain, and Chelsea supporters had returned the sentiment — he was booed at Stamford Bridge in the final pre-season friendly against Real Sociedad and again in the league opener against Fulham. He was left out of the squad for the two league games that followed. In City’s announcement he said that everyone knows how well City are run and that this is a club built for success.
What City Lost First
The size of the fee makes more sense alongside what left the Etihad this summer.
Rodri has been sold to Barcelona, and Bernardo Silva, Nico Gonzalez and Tijjani Reijnders have all gone too — four midfielders out in a single window. City had already spent heavily to start rebuilding, bringing in Elliot Anderson for a reported £116m and Ayyoub Bouaddi for around £86m before Tuesday.
Fernandez is the third of those signings and the most expensive. Whether a midfield assembled at that cost can replace a Ballon d’Or winner is the question the season will answer.
Chelsea’s Eighteen Million
For Chelsea the deal returns an £18m profit on a player they were determined not to sell at a loss, and resolves a situation that had become untenable inside the ground.
They are now working to bring in a replacement.
Enzo Fernandez — the deal
From: Chelsea · To: Manchester City · Fee: £125m, equalling the British record
Contract: Five years · Announced: Tuesday 1 September 2026, transfer deadline day
Previous record: Alexander Isak, Newcastle to Liverpool, £125m, summer 2025
His last move: Benfica to Chelsea, £107m, February 2023 — a British record at the time
At Chelsea: UEFA Conference League 2025, FIFA Club World Cup 2025
