Source: Yahoo!Cristiano Ronaldo is set to earn £106 million from his six-year deal at Real Madrid, with a mind-boggling final salary of £556,000-a-week.
The Portuguese star is on the verge of a move to the Bernabeu after Manchester United accepted a world record £80m bid for him on Thursday.
He will discuss a contract with the Spanish giants when he returns from holiday in Los Angeles, and will land the biggest contract in football history.
Real are expected to offer a structured deal starting at £183,000-a-week, but with a 25 per cent rise every season seeing his pay soar above half a million pounds every week in the final year of his contract.
Based on current exchange rates, Ronaldo's will be the fifth-largest contract in sports history behind four baseball deals.
The biggest belongs to Alex Rodriguez, who signed a 10-year, $275m (£167m) deal with the New York Yankees in 2008, equating to an average annual salary of £16.7m; slightly less than Ronaldo.
Rodriguez's previous $252m (£153m) contract with the Texas Rangers comes in at number two, while A-Rod's Yankees team-mates Derek Jeter ($189/10 years) and Mark Teixeira ($180m/eight years) both exceed Ronaldo, whose likely £106m contract is worth $174m.
Football's highest earner is David Beckham, who rakes in £27m per year, but only £4m comes from his club LA Galaxy; the rest is sponsorship and merchandising.
Ronaldo was fourth on a recently-published France Football list of the sport's highest earners behind Beckham, Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho, but he can expect his £15.5m total earnings from 2008 to increase significantly following his move to Madrid.
Ronaldo's possible £556,000-a-week wage in the last year of his contract works out at:
£79,428 a day
£3,309 an hour
£55 a minute
92p per second
Or, if Real Madrid play two games in a week:
£51.48 per second on the pitch.
What can Ronaldo buy with his total £106m Real Madrid contract?
- A Big Mac for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom.
- 530 new Ferrari 599 GTBs, like the one he wrote off in a crash earlier this year.
- Himself, with enough change for Carlos Tevez.
- Newcastle United Football Club.
- 588,000 hours in a tanning salon.
- 34,754,098 tubes of Brylcreem wet look hair gel.
- 42,400 ceiling mirrors.
- The most expensive house in Los Angeles, which belongs to TV producer Aaron Spelling, a three-story mansion with 56,500 square feet of space and a 4.6 acre estate.
- 163,077 bottles of Cristal champagne for himself and Paris Hilton at Hollywood nightspot My House.
- 26,500,000 inflatable donkeys.
- 10,610,610 pairs of Cristiano Ronaldo pyjamas.
- 706,666,667 telephone votes for Cristiano Ronaldo as Overseas Sports Personality of 2009.
So, this no-talent ball-kicker's salary is so big, he will be earning £55 a minute, even when he's asleep...
Take a look at the comments. So far, nobody agrees he should be getting that amount of money. In fact, they're saying practically the same things we are.
Some select quotes:
"Absolutley ridiculous, the world is crying poverty and yet we can pay some idiot to kick a ball that much money, its outrageous..."
"Ok footballers expect big salaries, this takes the biscuit, where does all the money come from to pay him?? It's shocking to think someone can earn this type of money for kicking a football around, are these people even concerned about the problems other people have just to scrape by, do they even live in the real world?"
"It is an absolute obscenity that someone can get paid so much for kicking a ball around. Football is only a game."
"Thats shocking. He should give some to charity. And btw, why do footballers earn more than hard working nurses, doctors, and brave fire men? Firemen RISK thier LIVES and all footballers do for work, (If you can call it that!) is kick a ball round a field for 90 minutes. And Its honestly not fair, this guy probably is gonna earn more money than the person who discovers a cure for cancer."
The part I underlined is so true, it's sad.