iTs not about money only: Ronaldo still the BESTFrench magazine France Football yesterday published a list of the top ten biggest money-makers in the footballing world with FC Barcelona Lionel Messi topping the list, raking in an annual income of €33 million, taking over from David Beckham (€30.4 million) with Cristiano Ronaldo third (€30 million) for the year 2009.
The list estimates Messi’s annual earnings by taking into account his €10 million basic salary, €4 million in bonuses plus another €19 million from sponsors including Adidas, Pepsi-Cola, Gillette, Gatorade, Konami, Air Europa, Telefonica/Movistar, SportCenter/ESPN, Damm, Danone, Lody For Men, Storkman, Repsol YPF, SanDisk and Mirage/Seiko.
Messi was outstanding last year as Barcelona won a unique six major trophies and he was then voted FIFA World Player of the Year, as France Football’s European Footballer of the Year and as World Soccer magazine’s World Footballer for 2009.
The complete top ten Rich List is as follows:
1. Leo Messi (Barcelona, Arg) €33m;
2. David Beckham (LA Galaxy, Eng) €30.4m;
3. C Ronaldo (Real Madrid, Por) €30m;
4. Kaka (Milan, Brz) €18.8m;
5. Thierry Henry (Barcelona, Fr) €18m;
6. Ronaldinho (Milan, Brz) €17.2m;
7. Carlos Tevez (Manchester City, Arg) €15.4m;
8. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Barcelona, Swe) €14.5m;
9. Frank Lampard (Chelsea, Eng) €14.2m;
10. Samuel Eto’o (Internazionale, Cam) €13.8m.
Read more www.totalbarca.com/2010/news/messi-out-did-cr9-in-annual-income/#ixzz0jMQHoeOJ
The race to be top scorer in the Spanish league (”Pichichi”) has been placed as a reason for this spat between Ronaldo and Higuain. A theme added to by quotes from Guti who said after the game: “We should have been more of a team instead of being individualistic.” A full report on this angle, in Spanish, can be seen here.