Top 5 highest paid footballers

A few days ago, the FIFA World Cup began and the football fever broke out around the world. Stories about footballers, teams and their chances of winning are all over the news. I decided to write a football-related post but it will not be another game analysis or a report on the average number of goals scored by the national team in the World Cup. Instead, I made a list of the top-paid footballers in the world according to goal.com.

Number 5, EUR 29 million per year: the first player on my list is Gerard Piqué who is a member of my favourite football club, namely FC Barcelona. He is romantically involved with the singer Shakira and they are parents to two sons. Piqué is one of the best defenders in the world. He won the World Cup with his Spanish team in 2010 and the European Championship in 2012. With his club, he was a seven-time winner of the Spanish football championship, a six-time winner of the King’s Cup and won the Champions League three times.

Number 4, EUR 44 million per year: these are the earnings per season of a Welsh player Gareth Bale who has been playing in the Real Madrid club for a number of years now. He plays on the positions of midfielder or striker and he has not had many successes with his national team – the only international championships that he played in were the Euro championship in 2016. One interesting fact is that he went down in history as the youngest player to represent Wales in football – he joined the national team when he was 16 years and 315 days old. He won the Champions League four times in a row with his club.

Number 3, EUR 81.5 million per year: Neymar Jr., the most expensive footballer in history, bought out from FC Barcelona by Paris Saint Germain for an incredible EUR 222 million comes in third place in terms of highest earning players. The 26-year-old midfielder/striker made his debut on the Brazilian national team in 2010. He played in 83 games and scored a total of 53 goals. We’ll see how many goals he will score in Russia.

Number 2, EUR 94 million per year: when it comes to earnings, the popular and loved Cristiano Ronaldo is second best to one other player against whom he competes in all other areas as well. Despite such high earnings, the Portugal-born player is not happy and there is reason to believe that he will be leaving Madrid. This might have something to do with his troubles with the Spanish tax office. In any case, CR7 is an excellent player – apart from winning 4 Golden Balls, being a four-time winner of the Champions League, winning the Euro Championship in 2016, he recently added a hat-trick in the draw against Spain. He is a human goal scoring machine.

Winner, 126 million per year: there is only one king and the royal title goes to the long-time FC Barcelona club player Leo Messi. The Argentinian midfielder/striker is – according to his club – worth every cent spent on him. Owing to his relatively low height (he is only 169 cm tall) he is often compared to another famous Argentinian player, Diego Maradona. He has been part of FC Barcelona since 2004. He has scored 552 goals in 637 games during this time. He and his national team made it to the World Cup finals in 2014 but lost to Germany. Messi was voted the best player of that championship.