Book reveals exorbitant salaries paid to footballers
Mario Balotelli, Carlos Tevez and Bastian Schweinsteiger are the latest players to have their huge salaries revealed in Football Leaks: The Dirty Business of Football, with the the Daily Mail this week publishing of extracts from the book detailing the extravagant payments. Bonus payments usually relate to winning trophies and appearance targets but Balotelli’s Liverpool deal included a £ 1 million ($ 1.9m) bonus clause for not getting sent off three times in a season.
It read: “If during each season of the term of this contract the player is not dismissed from the field of play on three or more occasions for violent conduct, spitting, for using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/ or gestures and/ or for dissent . . . then on the June 30 at the end of each season he shall receive a bonus payment.” Tevez broke the £ 200,000- a- week barrier in the Premier League when he joined Manchester City in 2009 — but that figure pales compared to the striker’s basic annual wage of £ 17.16m a year after tax with Shanghai Shenhua. But Tevez can add much more with bonuses that include: £ 788,000 if he starts 70 per cent of games; £ 1.56m if his side win the Asian Champions League; and £ 390,000 if he is top scorer.
But Tevez i s not the best- paid player in the world. That honours falls to fellow Argentine Ezequiel Lavezzi at Hebei China Fortune on £ 798,000 a week. If you wondered why Schweinsteiger was wishing United well when he had been frozen out by Jose Mourinho, his contract offers a clue.
Criticism of the manager invoked automatic fines of two weeks’ wages — and the German was on £ 7.55m a year. In total, Schweinsteiger played 2101 minutes at United, earning a salary of £ 5963 a minute. The book also reveals how lucrative boot deals have become. Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea’s image rights company gets £ 420,000 a year from Adidas.
By comparison, Lionel Messi’s tax trial in Barcelona revealed that between 2007- 2009 he received £ 3.4m from Adidas, paid into t wo separate companies.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino and FA chairman Greg Clarke this week said transfer deals needed more transparency.