Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami Contract
Date signed	July 15th, 2023
Date of expiry	December 31st, 2025
Per week (with or without bonus)	£750,000
Per year (with or without bonus)	£9,000,000

9Erling Haaland: Manchester City

Contract length: 2022-2027

In the summer of 2022, Manchester City announced the signing of Dortmund’s mercurial Norwegian Erling Haaland on a five-year deal, valued at £51million. With City expected to pay up to £85.5m including agent fees and other add-ons; the then 21-year-old’s contract set the tone for acquiring a modern world-beating talent.

Currently earning a weekly base sum of £375,000 with a bonus of £475,000, the man who scored 91 goals in his first 100 all-competition appearances for City, bags a whopping £44,200,000 per year. While many no doubt wonder if the market has gone crazy, many will explain it away as the price a club has to pay for certified quality.

Haaland’s trajectory is only going one way as he chases a third consecutive Golden Boot. In addition to his giant contract that runs to 2027, the Norwegian hitman has a release clause of £173million.

8Riyad Mahrez: Al-Ahli

Contract length: 2023-2027

Another excellent player of Manchester City, Riyad Mahrez just beats the man he shared three goal involvements with in 37 Cityzens games. Mahrez was yet another big name to make the Saudi switch within the last few seasons, with his move to Al-Ahli after five years, and five Premier League titles, with Pep Guardiola’s side.

Al-Ahli forked out the cash in a deal reportedly worth up to £30m. In part of a huge summer exodus to Saudi Arabia’s riches, Mahrez followed the likes of Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante and Ruben Neves after Cristiano Ronaldo’s head-turning transfer. Mahrez’s contract runs until 2027, and sees him on just over £850,000 a week (£854,985) with a yearly sum sitting just under £45m (£44,459,240) for the Algerian national team captain’s services.

7Neymar: Paris Saint-Germain

Contract length: 2021-2025

Before he made a Saudi switch of his own in August 2023, Neymar signed a gargantuan contract extension to keep him at Paris Saint-Germain ideally until 2025. Up to this point, the gifted Brazilian had been at the club since the 2017-18 term, when he decided to move out of the shadows of Lionel Messi at Barcelona and take centre stage at the Parc des Princes in a world-record fee move worth £200m.

Initially on an eye-watering weekly figure just shy of £710,000, his performances, paired with PSG’s push for Champions League glory to add to their then-three Ligue 1 titles with the Brazilian, led to the club throwing a further four-year extension at the winger in 2021. His new deal signed in May of that year, projected Neymar to highest-earner status at the capital club – with £923,212 (€1,923,077) a week, blasting his salary up to £48,002,352, or a more well-rounded €100m.

6Cristiano Ronaldo: Juventus

Contract length: 2018-2022

Cristiano Ronaldo swapped the white of Real Madrid for the additional black stripes of Juventus in 2018 in a 112m euro (£99.2m) transfer that shook the football world, making CR7 the fourth most expensive signing ever at the time.

The 33-year-old Portuguese icon signed a four-year deal with the then-Italian champions after winning four Champions League titles in his nine years at Real. In a new challenge, the Turin giants saw Ronaldo as a key to their own UCL mission, although they’d ultimately come up short.

The first of this article’s players to exceed a million a week, Ronaldo signed a contract that saw him earn €1,104,038, equating to €57,410,000 a year (just under £49m). It was a serious cost for what turned out to be two Serie As, a Coppa Italia crown and two Supercoppas. With that lack of European silverware, Ronaldo moved on to a homecoming with Manchester United in 2021 as Juve felt the pinch of the great’s wages and he, himself, requested a move away in the final year of his deal.

5Lionel Messi: Barcelona

Contract length: 2017-2021

In the 2017-18 season, speculation was rife over the Argentinian talisman’s long-term future and whether it lay with Barcelona. Such was the angst as to whether the Camp Nou favourite would add to his bulging trophy cabinet that held eight LaLiga titles at the time, Barcelona pulled out all the stops to keep Messi in Catalonia.

November 2017 saw Messi pen a deal that would run until 2021, with the option of another year. In addition to his €70m-a-year wage, which sat at around £1.2m a week, Messi was also apparently handed a signing-on sum of €100m (£88.5m) as compensation for his troubles after his conviction for tax fraud.

With deals like this, you get no prizes for wondering how Barca got in the financial mess they see themselves in nowadays. In fact, Messi would eventually depart the Blaugrana for PSG, as the club could effectively no longer afford him and decided not to renew the star player’s contract in August 2021 after 17 seasons owing to “financial and structural obstacles.”

4Kylian Mbappe: Paris Saint-Germain

Contract length: 2022-2025

Speaking of PSG, a club with well-lined pockets that they could splurge on Messi, showed their continued wealth in 2022 as they looked to ward off Real Madrid and other circling clubs from a want-away Kylian Mbappe.

This deal followed a mini-saga where Mbappe initially told the club that he was seeing out his contract at the end of the 2021-22 season. Persuaded to stay, he ultimately signed a two-year contract extension, with the option of a further year. This was reported to be around €1.4m, more than double the two-year €617,000-a-week deal he signed in 2019-20.

With this new deal, Mbappe earned €72m (£61m) a year for the last three years, before opting against the further 12 months as the allure of Real Madrid in the summer of 2024 had European glory firmly in his sights.

3Neymar: Al Hilal

Contract length: 2023-2025

The second time he’s featuring on this list, Neymar’s latest contract is simply enormous and somewhat overshadows a skilful career that has been debatably traded for riches.

Toeing the line between money chasing and performing on centre stage for a number of seasons before the move, the 31-year-old ‘Prince who never became King’ joined Al Hilal for a transfer of 90m euros (£77.6m) plus add-ons in August 2023.

Although a mere two-year deal for the tricky, yet injury-prone star, the contract sees Ney bag £1,637,903 a week, adding up to just under £86m per annum. Clearly, Al Hilal have got their money’s worth so far, as the man who helped PSG to 13 trophies, including five Ligue 1 titles, only played five games before rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament while on international duty in October 2023.

2Karim Benzema: Al-Ittihad

Contract length: 2023-2026

Following in the footsteps of a man he shared the pitch 342 times with, as well as 76 direct goal contributions in Cristiano Ronaldo, Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema signed for Al-Ittihad in June 2023.

Benzema signed after his Real Madrid exit, of which the club allowed him to leave a year early. The striker who won 25 trophies – including five Champions Leagues and four La Ligas – in 14 years, agreed to a three-year deal that saw him take home just under £1.7m a week. His yearly rate is believed to be just over £85m. Benzema scored 354 goals for Real, second only to Cristiano Ronaldo, and has already started life in Saudi Arabia with nine goals in 21 league games.

1Cristiano Ronaldo: Al-Nassr

Contract length: 2023-2025

Cristiano Ronaldo arrives as the highest paid footballer in the world. As explained by Al-Jazeera, Saudi Arabia remained the only team to beat eventual winners Argentina at the 2022 World Cup, yet that same year still had time for more surprises for the country, as Ronaldo led a new Saudi revolution in signing for Al-Nassr.

Signing on a two-and-a-half-year contract, Ronaldo’s services set the Riyadh club back nearly £3.3m a week, with a yearly total salary reaching just over £170m.

He is currently the world’s highest earning athlete, and adds this serious influx of cash to his already massive £505m career earnings. Additionally, if this wasn’t enough, the 39-year-old forward makes a further £45.8m in off-field sponsors and exploits.