Top 10 Biggest Earners in Football: David Beckham No Longer Number One!

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These guys could probably spare us all a few pence/euros/dollars!

Well, everything is coming up Lionel Messi these days, so it only makes sense that he should be the highest paid footballer on the planet, too. Yes, little Leo has surpassed Davey Becks and his modeling millions, dethroning the bearded money tree’s two-year hold on the top spot, and also becoming the fourth highest paid athlete in the world, behind only Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and LeBron James.
Helping Messi become the supremo in this amazingly trivial list was the £3.6 million bonus for helping Barcelona win the treble last season and the fact that Becks has been getting paid with weakened dollars.
Here are the top 10 players and managers…

The France Football rich list:
Players (combines salaries, bonuses and off-field earnings)
1. Lionel Messi (Barcelona) £29.6m
2. David Beckham (LA Galaxy/Milan) £27.3m
3. Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid) £27m
4. Kaka (Real Madrid) £16.9m
5. Thierry Henry (Barcelona) £16.1m
6. Ronaldinho (AC Milan) £15.5m
7. Carlos Tevez (Manchester City) £13.8m
8. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Barcelona) £13m
9. Frank Lampard (Chelsea) £12.8m
10. Samuel Eto’o (Inter Milan) £12.4m (Dirty Tackle)

Sevilla FC vs FC Barcelona

Leo Messi: “Shit, where did I leave my wallet?”

So there you have it. Whilst there is clearly no need to send David Beckham money in the post (perhaps a pack of cards or something similar to help keep the England man from getting too bored as he recovers from long term injury) it appears that he is now no longer the games big earner.

Leo Messi now lays claim to that title and why not. The impish Argentine did after all help Barcelona to a treble last term and could well be set to help the Catalan side to yet more silverware this term. Having scored a remarkable 38 goals last term the 22 year old attacker decided to outdo that stellar tally this season and has already netted 34 goals in just 38 games so is therefore more than worthy of the huge amount of cash given to him.

Its interesting also to see that of the top ten list only two ply their trade in the Premier League, Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Man City’s Carlos Tevez being the pair, perhaps this could well be down to the mega earners looking to flee the large tax hike that was brought in for those earning obscene amounts of cash.

What is perhaps interesting to note is that even though the figures discussed are astronomical they are still some way off the earning potential of the big stars in American sports as well as those who earn their living in sports such as Formula 1 or indeed Boxing.

Perhaps not literally putting your life on the line, as racing car drivers and pugilists regularly do, means you don’t get the big bucks but I would’ve thought that football players would get salaries that would rival the sums being paid to top NFL, NBA or MLB sportsman but that doesn’t appear to be the case, although it seems the gap is beginning to close.

Now we could sit here for hours discussing the morality of paying these guys millions upon millions but lets face it if we were talented enough to be paid this much for doing something we loved then we sure wouldn’t fling the money back in their faces, would we?

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