Football Players Make Money

I know, revolutionary reporting, huh. Sports Illustrated put up their annual list of top earning athletes, separating it into two separate categories: Americans and Non-Americans. (You know, being an American publication and all.) Not surprisingly, soccer players didn’t get a whiff of the Top 50 on the domestic list. However, they dominated the international list, shepherding 9 big money makers into the International 20. And fear not, Chelsea FC is well represented.

(This was obviously done in American dollaz – so feel free to multiple by about 10 and 20 for the euro and pound, respectively.)

Top 20.:.

1. Fernando Alonso. Auto Racing. $35m.
2. Ronaldinho. Barcelona. $32.7m.
3. Roger Federer. Tennis. $31,343,885m. (Roger has an anal accountant.)
4. Valentino Rossi. Motor Sports. $30m.
5. David Beckham. Real Madrid/LA Galaxy. $29.7m.
6. Yao Ming. Basketball. $27.455m.
7. Ichiro Suzuki. Baseball. $24m.
8. Maria Sharapova. Tennis. $23,799,501m. (Alright, guess it’s a tennis thing.)
9. Thierry Henry. Arsenal/Barcelona. $21.4m.
10. Michael Ballack. Chelsea. $20.9m.
11. Ronaldo. Milan. $19m. (Yeah, I’d like to see this $-to-minutes played ratio.)
12. Hideki Matsui. Baseball. $19m. (All of which goes straight to his vault of porn.)
13. Dirk Nowitski. Basketball. $18,101,625m.
14. Ralf Schumacher. Auto Racing. $18m.
15. Andriy Shevchenko. Chelsea Bench. $17.3m. (I can’t wait until Ronaldo is ushered out of Milan in favor of Andriy this summer. One for the other.)
16. Alfonso Soriano. Baseball. $17.25m.
17. Vijay Singh. Golf. $16,411,026m.
18. Alessandro Del Piero. Juventus. $15.7m. (Probably the best earnings from a Serie B athlete ever.)
19. John Terry. Chelsea. $15.5m. ($100,000 more than Stevie G, now we know why McClaren gave him the captaincy.)
20. Steven Gerrard. Liverpool. $15.4m.

Link here.

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Category: World Football