The world's highest paid footballers in 2023
The extravagant former Juventus president Gianni Agnelli ran the Italian giants by the mantra: «Poor footballers are certainly overpaid. The good ones never earn enough.»
Yet, even the good footballers seem grossly overpaid in the modern game.
Long gone are the days when Serie A commanded the best and most generously rewarded players. Instead, the financial focus in the game today is split between the Premier League and an aggressively expanding Saudi Arabia.
Here's the rundown of how much the world's best-paid players stand to earn this season, with some of the figures surely too rich even for the memory of Agnelli.
Team: Bayern Munich
Club salary: £21.5m
Off-field earnings: £8.2m
Harry Kane's move to Bayern Munich was not a question of money — Tottenham Hotspur were prepared to significantly increase his £200,000-per-week salary with a new contract in the summer — but a shot at genuine silverware.
Bayern's most expensive signing of all time is hardly on a pittance in Bavaria but his campaign in Germany began with failure. After losing the DFL Supercup on Kane's debut, the national publication ran the headline: «Kane here! Title gone!»
Team: ManchesterCity
Club salary: £28.9m
Off-field earnings: £3.3m
By his own account, Kevin De Bruyne describes himself as normally «super chilled» until crossing the white line. «Once a referee has blown the whistle,» he warned, «you see another Kevin.»
De Bruyne had his game face on when he went into contract negotiations with Manchester City in 2021, securing a 30% bump after hiring Analytics FC to provide a statistical argument for his wage hike. Clearly, the powers that be at City don't subscribe to the old adage: «There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.»
T
Read on 90min.com
