Lionel Messi immediately becomes the top earner at Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) following his arrival on a free transfer from Barcelona.
The Parisian club has put together a dream team of big names, but that has come at a cost and it means paying big salaries. An annual wage bill of over 300 million euros is the price of assembling a squad beyond the reach of most clubs.
Within that enormous wage budget, there are different tiers – not every player can earn what Messi will be given, after all.
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It is no surprise that PSG’s all-star forward trio are on the highest salaries and between them account for about a third of the club’s overall wage bill. Few clubs could afford to pay one of these players, let alone to line up all three together.
Messi is the club’s new top earner with an annual wage of in the region of 40 million euros, while Neymar and Kylian Mbappe are on 36 and 25 million euros respectively.
This is the triumvirate that will have teams across Europe worried this season, and they are the crown jewels of Qatar’s Parisian project.
One level down from the top stars we find another two new arrivals in Sergio Ramos and Gianluigi Donnarumma. It is the former Real Madrid man who leads this next group, with his 20 million euros putting him somewhere in between tiers one and two.
Donnarumma, along with Marquinhos, Marco Verratti, Angel Di Maria, Keylor Navas, Presnel Kimpempe and Mauro Icardi, will be on between 10 and 15 million euros per year.
Wijnaldum and Achraf the ‘worst-paid’ signings
Just falling below this group are another two new signings – it has been a busy summer at PSG even before Messi arrived – in Georginio Wijnaldum and Achraf Hakimi.
These two players are both on 9.8 million euros per year, making them the lowest paid of the new arrivals, while still being on wages that put them out of the reach of most clubs.
The lowest paid
Next on the list of PSG’s stars we find Leandro Paredes and Ander Herrera (8.5 million euros per year), followed by Julian Draxler (7.6 million euros) and Idrissa Gueye (seven million euros).
It is incredible to be listing such players as being towards the lower end of earners, but that is the scale of the project that PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi is leading.
On the next step down, earning around five million euros per year, are Abdou Diallo, Rafinha Alcantara, Juan Bernat, Pablo Sarabia, Thilo Kehrer and Layvin Kurzawa.
Colin Dagba, on 1.4 million euros, is one of the lowest-earning first-team players at the club.
This is what PSG have been able to spend on their squad of stars, now it remains to be seen how the align and what success they will lead them to. What’s certain is that ambitions will be set as high as possible. [Marca]
