How much would people have to pay you to play football just like Ronaldinho? If I could I would do it for free but if you want the man himself you’ll have to pay around ?19.5m a year to match his current salary and outside earnings, making him the world’s current highest paid footballer.

Former top earner David Beckham has seen his earnings drop by almost a third to just over ?12m from last year’s table topping ?17.3m while another Real Madrid galactico, Ronaldo, comes in third.

Showing that English players still get as much attention at home as they do in Spain, Wayne Rooney comes in fourth with an estimated annual income of around ?11.2m from his Manchester United salary and endorsement deals. Not bad going for a player barely in his twenties and a nice sideline after lifting the PFA Young Player of the Year Award this week.

Top earning coaches, unsurprisingly, all look up to Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho on ?7.56m a year and current England coach Sven Goran Eriksson on ?4.78m.

Hands up who doesn’t begrudge them a penny of it.

Yeah, I thought so.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Finances In Football. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.