'The Bundesliga Tax'. It's a phrase that has become more prominent amongst supporters over the past decade or so, used to describe the growing trend of players who have lit up the German top-flight who have been sold to Premier League clubs for big money, only to fail to replicate that same form when arriving in England.
The debate over how well performances in the Bundesliga translate to the Premier League has reared its head again in the early weeks of this season following the struggles of Florian Wirtz and Xavi Simons at Liverpool and Tottenham, respectively. The pair combined for 40 league goals and assists last term, but have mustered just the solitary assist between them in 17 Premier League appearances thus far despite being sold for almost £170 million ($191m).
Former Bayer Leverkusen playmaker Wirtz has struggled to find a suitable role at Anfield, which has led to him being benched on numerous occasions by Arne Slot, while Simons suffered the ignominy of being substituted against Chelsea on Saturday despite having only entered the game off the bench himself earlier in the piece.
There remain question marks, too, over how Benjamin Sesko, Jamie Gittens and Jeremie Frimpong will fare in the Premier League following their summer arrivals from the Bundesliga, and while plenty of players do arrive into England from Germany and thrive – see Erling Haaland, for one shining example – the list of individuals who fail to live up to the hype is in danger of growing to the point that some fanbases will actively call out their clubs for fishing in such an unreliable pond.
GOAL, then, looks back at the most high-profile transfer flops to have arrived into the Premier League from the Bundesliga in recent years:
Getty Images SportJadon Sancho
Borussia Dortmund plucked a 17-year-old Jadon Sancho out of the Manchester City academy back in 2017 and instantly handed him a first-team role. Over the next four years, he became one of the most exciting wingers in Europe, registering 107 goal involvements in just 137 appearances, while also getting his hands on a DFB-Pokal winners' medal alongside fellow young stars Haaland and Jude Bellingham.
In the summer of 2021, United made Sancho the second-most expensive English player ever when luring him away from Signal Iduna Park, and then-manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer confidently predicted the winger would "bring tremendous pace, flair and creativity to the team". Unfortunately, though, Sancho never made good on those words.
He has only scored 12 times for United to date, and has made more headlines for fallouts with managers than his exploits on the pitch. Sancho was exiled by both Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim, and after temporary spells with former club Dortmund and Chelsea, now finds himself on loan at Aston Villa with no guarantee of regular minutes. Despite possessing all the talent in the world, Sancho's attitude and lack of physicality have prevented him from making any meaningful impact in the Premier League, and he's seemingly been stricken by fear in a way he never was in Germany.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportChristopher Nkunku
Christopher Nkunku has all the qualities a forward needs to succeed on the elite stage: pace, intelligence, immaculate technique and ruthlessness. RB Leipzig saw all of that between 2019 and 2023, as the Frenchman blasted in 70 goals in all competitions to become their talisman, and when Chelsea snapped him up for £52m ($68m) in June 2023, it was seen as a major coup.
But the step up in intensity from the Bundesliga to the Premier League proved too much for Nkunku. He was unable to build any sort of rhythm at Stamford Bridge due to a series of injuries, and after the emergence of Cole Palmer, he was restricted to a bit-part role.
Nkunku left for AC Milan in the summer of 2025 with a respectable goals tally of 18 from 62 appearances, but few Chelsea fans were sad to see the back of him. Despite flashes of brilliance, the former Leipzig frontman wasn't robust enough for the rigours of English football and too often stood on the fringes of games instead of grabbing them by the scruff of the neck.
GettyKai Havertz
Kai Havertz was on the radar of almost every top club in Europe after a stunning rise to prominence at Leverkusen, where he recorded a combined total of 77 goals and assists after breaking out of their academy ranks. Chelsea eventually won the race for his signature at the end of the 2020 summer window, and some were even billing the Germany playmaker as the next Mesut Ozil despite it not being immediately clear how he would fit into the Blues' starting XI.
Leverkusen put Havertz's versatility to good use in No.8 and No.10 roles, but he was deployed predominantly upfront for Chelsea, and looked like a fish out of water. Indeed, his first season at the club yielded just four Premier League goals, and was only salvaged by his winning strike in the 2021 Champions League final against Manchester City.
Havertz continued to be a fixture in the Chelsea side over the next two seasons, but never properly silenced his doubters, and the Blues jumped at the chance to offload him when Arsenal came in with a £65m ($85m) bid in June 2023. It's been a similar story for Havertz at the Emirates Stadium, with consistency remaining largely elusive, and the 26-year-old's career has essentially been on hiatus in 2025 due to serious injuries.
GettyChristian Pulisic
Chelsea initially signed Christian Pulisic from Dortmund in January 2019, with ex-United States star Taylor Twellman describing the deal as a "watershed moment for the American soccer player". Borussia Dortmund were sad to lose a "characteristically flawless footballer", as their sporting director Michael Zorc put it, but Pulisic closed out his time at the club in disappointing fashion, losing his place to Sancho amid struggles for fitness.
That led to claim Pulisic, then only 21 years of age, had "stagnated" and insist Chelsea were "mad" to spend so much money on him. Over the next four years, the German outlet was proven right. Although the USMNT star would pick up Champions League, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup winners' medals in west London, and deliver some memorable moments (including a hat-trick against Burnley and a brilliant solo goal against Manchester City), he was dogged by physical setbacks and hampered by Chelsea's chaotic transfer policy.
Pulisic gradually fell down the pecking order as competition for places in attack increased and never recovered. Chelsea eventually accepted a £36m ($47m) loss on the Dortmund academy product when shipping him off to Milan, where Pulisic has since replenished his confidence stocks.
"I felt pressure that I needed to do more when I did get on the pitch," he admitted to when looking back on his time at Stamford Bridge last December. Bad luck also played a part, but Pulisic buckled under that pressure, and it remains to be seen whether he gets another chance at the very highest level, with standards at Milan no longer as high as in Serie A's golden years.