The 12 most lucrative contracts in football history: Where does Mohamed Salah rank?
Mohamed Salah has signed a new deal at Liverpool – but he still doesn’t rank among the players with the most lucrative contracts in football history.
Despite his reported base salary of £400,000, Salah has only signed for a further two years at Liverpool and falls short of our list.
We’ve crunched the numbers and have found the 12 most lucrative contracts in football history.
12. Paul Pogba (Man Utd) – €113m
Five years – 2016-2021
The Carrington academy graduate left United on a free in 2012. He then helped Juventus get back to the top and established himself as one of the best midfielders in Europe in the process.
Having won four successive Scudetto and played in a Champions League final, it was always going to cost United a pretty penny to get him back. Not only was his reported £89million fee a world record, but the contract negotiated for the player by infamous superagent Mino Raiola was one of the most expensive ever seen.
Pogba earned over €100million over the course of the five-year deal he penned on his return in 2016. United activated a one-year extension in the deal and he ended up staying for a sixth year, departing on a free to Juventus for a second time in 2022.
The France international lifted the League Cup and Europa League trophies during his first year back, but since then endured five long and frustrating trophyless seasons. It’s difficult to argue United got their money’s worth, given they invested over £200million on the player all-in.
11. Gareth Bale (Real Madrid) – €178m
Six years – 2016-2022
In October 2016, Gareth Bale signed a new contract at Real Madrid that made him the best-paid player in world football.
There was a logic to it at the time; the Welshman’s moments of magic helped deliver two Champions League trophies. A further three – and three La Liga titles – followed that contract renewal, but Los Blancos ultimately saw diminishing returns in his latter years.
It was kind of sad to see Bale as a peripheral squad player by the end of his eight-year stay at the Bernabeu. But those exorbitant wages explain why he stayed until the end of his contract, eventually leaving on a free in 2022.
=9. Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus) – €220m
Four years – 2018-2022
In the summer of 2018, Juventus had won their seventh Serie A in a row. With Italy well and truly conquered, they set their sights on the next frontier – Europe.
The Old Lady had finished runners-up in the Champions League twice in the preceding years, and the mega-money signing of Ronaldo was thought to be the last piece of the puzzle to take them that next step.
They paid a club-record €117million to sign the Portuguese icon, who was the European Cup’s all-time top scorer and had just lifted Ol’ Big Ears for a fourth time in five years. They also handed him a massive four-year deal worth over €200million.
Ronaldo, inevitably, scored plenty of goals – but things didn’t quite go to plan. They retained the Scudetto in 2018-19 and 2020-21, making it nine in a row, but they went backwards in Europe – being eliminated by Ajax, Lyon and Porto during his three years there.
By 2021, they’d also been knocked off their perch in Italy, crawling to an underwhelming fourth-place finish. Ronaldo left Turin with a year left on his deal, but has remained well-remunerated…
=9. Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid) – €220m
Five years – 2016-2021
A month after Bale’s new deal, Ronaldo followed suit and once again became Los Blancos’ top earner at the Bernabeu by signing a bumper five-year contract extension.
At that point, he was already Madrid’s all-time top goalscorer and allowing him to run down his contract was unthinkable.
But he didn’t stick around to see out the deal, flouncing off to Juventus, having spoken about feeling underappreciated.
“I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start,” he said. “In the first four or five years there I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’,” he told France Football.
“Less afterwards. The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean.”
Madrid got 450 goals out of Ronaldo during his peak years, and turned a profit, selling him at the age of 33. Not bad business, that.
8. Neymar (PSG) – €267m
Six years – 2017-2023
No wonder Neymar left Barcelona, with this kind of cash on the table. That’s on top of the €222million release clause that PSG paid for the Brazilian.
A head-spinning number, all-in.
7. Kylian Mbappe (Real Madrid) – €306m
Five years – 2024-2029
In order to sign for Real Madrid, Mbappe actually took a pay cut from what he’d been earning at PSG, albeit he still ranks among the highest-paid footballers in the world.
Not including his image rights, the Frenchman will earn just over €300million if he sees out his five-year contract at Madrid.
6. Neymar (Al-Hilal) – €327m
Two years – 2023-2025
Despite only playing 428 minutes of football since joining Al-Hilal, Neymar will have made over €300million by the time his contract comes to an end in the summer.
While Al-Hilal do have the option to extend his deal by a further year, they understandably don’t seem keen on triggering that option.
READ NEXT: Ranking every Premier League club by their wage bill in 2024-25
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the 20 footballers with the highest accumulated transfer fees?
5. Kylian Mbappe (PSG) – €420m
Two years – 2022-2024
During his final contract at PSG, Mbappe was taking home a base wage of €1.38million which was then topped up by various bonuses and sponsorship deals.
Had he triggered his one-year extension at the end of 2023-24, the Frenchman would’ve made over €600million throughout the duration of his final contract in Paris.
However, the lure of Real Madrid was too good to turn down, even with the riches he was earning in Paris at the time.
4. Erling Haaland (Manchester City) – €439m
Nine and a half years – 2025-2034
Having recently penned a new deal with Manchester City until 2034, Haaland is set to become one of the richest footballers of all time.
Along with his base wage of £500,000 per week, the Norwegian forward will also earn £250,000 a week in image rights according to TalkSport. That means he’ll earn around £370m (€439m) over the full course of his nine-and-a-half-year deal at City.
3. Cristiano Ronaldo (Al-Nassr) – €507m
Two and a half years – 2023-2025
After agreeing to terminate his contract with Manchester United six months early, Ronaldo left the European game after two decades to sign for Al Nassr.
The 39-year-old joined the Saudi Pro League club on a two-and-a-half-year deal running until 2025. His basic salary is worth €71million but image rights and commercials deals – not least an added ambassadorial role in Saudi Arabia’s bid for the 2030 World Cup – take it to €203million a year, so over half a billion contract if he sees out his full contract.
2. Karim Benzema (Al-Ittihad) – €535m
Three years – 2023-2026
Despite earning slightly less than Ronaldo at Al-Nassr, Benzema ranks slightly higher on this list by virtue of his contract being slightly longer.
Given the relaxed tax laws in Saudi Arabia, we dread to think just how much money the Frenchman currently has in the bank.
1. Lionel Messi (Barcelona) – €555m
Four years – 2017-2021
Such was Messi’s status, popularity and on-field importance at Barcelona, former president Josep Maria Bartomeu can reasonably argue that he had little choice but to give in to the Argentinian’s wage demands and make him the highest-paid footballer in the world.
But this was just part of the club’s reckless financial mismanagement, which eventually resulted in the whole house of cards falling down, with Lionel Messi saying a tearful goodbye to the only club he’d ever represented in the summer of 2021. Barcelona literally couldn’t afford to keep him, which tells you something about where they went wrong.