Who was the most expensive soccer player when Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl in 2002?

Soccer and NFL are often confused since the first one is called “football” in most of English-speaking countries in the world, except for United States. Soccer has lots of stars, NFL does too. But in this last one, there’s an outstanding one on top of everybody: Tom Brady. Being 43 years old, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarter-back is approaching his tenth appearance in the Super Bowl, having won six.

His first appearance was in 2002, when Super Bowl XXXVI was held between his team, New England Patriots, beat St Louis Rams for a 20-17 score. He was about to turn 25 years old, in a moment in which the world was recovering from the horrific World Trade Center attack. And soccer was waiting for the first biggest signings of the new millennium.

In 2000, Luis Figo produced a huge shock when he switched from Barcelona to Derby rivals Real Madrid for $75 million, breaking the record. Until him, Hernán Crespo was the highest transfer ever when Lazio paid $66 million for him. But in 2001, a few months before the Super Bowl, the benchmark was raised again.

Zinedine Zidane was going to start the ‘Galactic’ trend in Real Madrid when the Spanish club bought him from Juventus in mid-2001. After five years of a stellar display in Turin, the French master would be the record-breaking transfer. The Merengues paid $93.77 million on July 9th. This figure was only beaten by Real Madrid (again) when they bought Kaká in 2009.