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Football

25th Mar 2015

New football wages survey finds out that Lionel Messi is stinking, stinking rich

We'd look that happy too if we had his bank account details

Neil Treacy

It’s not exactly coming as a surprise to us, but it seems that Lionel Messi is a little bit rich.

A new survey of footballers wages by France Football shows that the Barcelona star is the highest paid footballer in the world, bringing in an estimated whopping €65m between his wages at the club, and other endorsement deals.

With a basic (there’s nothing basic about it) wage of around €35m, Messi can add in deals with Adidas, Turkish Airlines and EA Sports to bring his earnings up to around €65m.

It means that he’s raking in around €5m every month, or €1.25m a week, or €178,000 a day.

Good lord.

But whenever Messi’s name appears in a list, you can bet your bottom dollar that Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t far behind, and the Real star is second in the list, raking in €54m a year between his club wages and other sponsorship deals, leaving him with a cool million and change to spend every single week. That’s a lot of hair gel and earrings, although he probably gets those for free as well, the jammy so and so.

It’s an all-La Liga top three, with Neymar’s paltry, measly €36.5m a year in third place.

The highest earning Premier League player is Robin Van Persie, picking up around €25.5m a year, while Wayne Rooney is just behind him, with a routine €22.5m heading into his bank account every 12 months.

As for managers, Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho is cleaning up on his Special One image, with around €18m in earnings each year, Arsene Wener gets around €11.2m, and the cost of employing a man whose first instinct is to lump long balls in the direction of Marouane Fellaini is €10m a year. Let that one sink in.

Also nice to see David Moyes has landed on his feet. He’s among the top 10 highest paid managers, taking in a nice €7m a year with Real Sociedad. Andy Tate won’t be happy.

H-t The Mirror

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