A supercar for a day’s work
HOW would you like to earn a Ferrari 488 GTB for just an hour’s work? Or an Audi R8 for half an hour’s labour? Not enticing enough? Try a Porsche Panamera Turbo S for just 11 minutes of your time.
Oh, and it’s not really work either. It’s kicking a football around.
But before you start planning your new career, make sure you’re pretty handy at football (or soccer if you must). Reach the top of your sport here and the riches are monumental. Obscene even.
Forbes’ latest list of wealthiest athletes showed two of the top three highest-paid sportsmen globally were footballers: Real Madrid’s Christiano Ronaldo who earned $93 million (AUD$124 million) in salary, bonuses and endorsements, and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi with $80 million (AUD$106million).
Such riches inevitably mean fancy cars follow, and thanks to research performed by UK online car dealership Carspring, we can see exactly how many minutes of on-pitch playing time each footballer needs to pay off their choice of ride.
Prepare to get jealous. Researching the cars driven by more than 250 of the world’s leading football players, Carspring has collated the cars they drive and the time it takes them to pay off its cost.
Let’s start with the aforementioned Christiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese owns a $3 million Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse, and on his monumental earnings it only takes him five hours and 15 minutes of playing time to afford it. That’s about three-and-a-half
games of football.
Lionel Messi, meanwhile, punts around in a Ferrari F430 Spider. While most of use would need to sell our house to afford such a supercar, the Argentinian needs only play for Barcelona for just over half an hour to afford it.
Players with less expensive tastes can pay of their rides even faster. N’Golo Kante of Chelsea, for example, drives a Mini Cooper S diesel, and he’d only need to play for 13 minutes to pay off its value.
Other footballer car selections include Luis Suarez’s Audi R8 (paid off after 30 minutes on the pitch), Raheem Sterling’s BMW i8 (38 minutes), Neymar’s Ferrari 458 Spider (45 minutes), Wayne Rooney’s Aston Martin Vanquish S (50 minutes) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s Porsche 918 Spyder (2 hours).
There is humbleness to be found however. Manchester City’s Jesus Navas was the player who could pay his car off faster than any other football star. His choice? A Nissan Micra.