Tis the season to be jolly. That is of course unless you are Carlos Tevez. Reportedly tired, depressed and disillusioned with life, the Manchester City superstar has this week handed in a written transfer request complaining of relationships with ‘certain executives’ at the club as being ‘broken and beyond repair’.
Poor Carlos. Miles from home, a strange land, an impenetrable language, idiosyncratic cuisine and a less than ideal climate.
Actually, it’s anything but ‘poor’ Carlos. More like fabulously wealthy Carlos. With a weekly wage in excess of £200,000 after tax and a reported multimillion pound lump sum offer enticing him to stay sitting on the table he’s not short of a bob or two to help him tolerate the inhospitalities of Manchester. (Time to wheel out the industrial sized money counter!)
In the grand scheme of highly paid sports stars how do these numbers really stack up though? Whilst Tevez is clearly extremely well paid how do his earnings compare with other footballers or stars in other sports?
Here’s a run down of some of the other big earners in sport.
Paid handsomely as he is Tevez certainly isn’t the best paid footballer out there. Top of the heap is Barcelona’s Lionel Messi with Christiano Ronaldo coming in a close second followed by the likes of Ibrahimovic, Eto’o and Beckham still.
Though the explosion in footballers’ salaries and associated income streams such as image rights has certainly catapulted many of them up the table of top sports earners, they still lag behind the biggest and best paid beasts in the sports jungle – the American sporting giants.
Whilst footballers don’t do too shabbily the latest earnings information available shows that it is American non football playing sportsmen who lead the way. Tiger Woods despite his much publicised indiscretions is well out in the lead with around $90 million in earnings over the last year. Fellow golfer Phil Mickleson is second with the best paid non American – Swiss tennis ace Roger Federer in third. Next come boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr and NBA star LeBron James both all earning more than the rest of the best paid non Americans.
Arguably the best pound for pound boxer in the world Manny Pacquiao, Japanese baseball star, Italian Moto GP hero Valentino Rossi and Chinese basketball giant Yao Ming all earn in excess of $35 million with Rafael Nadal and Lewis Hamilton not far behind. Nice work if you can get it.
Great though it must be to earn for most sports people it’s not all about the cash. And as they say…there’s far more to life than money. Just ask Carlos.
