PARIS: Portugal great Cristiano Ronaldo once again topped the Forbes highest-paid footballers list for the 2025-26 season, as one of three members of the top 10 plying their trade in Saudi Arabia.
It is the sixth time in the last decade that Ronaldo has topped the Forbes list and comes just over a week after Bloomberg announced that the 40-year-old had become football’s first billionaire.
With on- and off-field earnings of an estimated $280 million, Al Nassr’s Ronaldo will earn more than double that of second-placed rival Lionel Messi, whose $130 million estimate is made up of more off-field earnings than those from playing for his US club Inter Miami.
Next up is French former Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema, who earns $104 million a year thanks to his huge contract at Saudis Al Ittihad.
The third member of the top 10 playing in Saudi Arabia is Senegalese forward Sadio Mane, a teammate of Ronaldo’s who earns an estimated $54 million in eighth.
The number of players from Saudi clubs in the top 10 compared to a year ago has dropped by one as Brazil’s Neymar left Al Hilal in January to return to his boyhood club, Santos in Sao Paulo.
He had been third on the list with USD110 million in 2024-25 but now apparently earns a paltry USD38 million, mostly from off-field contracts.
Despite the power and wealth of the English Premier League — whose clubs spent a record £2.6 billion (USD3.5 billion) on transfers in the summer window — only two players from that competition make the top 10 with Manchester City’s Erling Haaland fifth and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah seventh.
But it is Spain’s La Liga that has the most representatives in the top 10, including three Real Madrid players in Kylian Mbappe (fourth), Vinicius Jr (sixth) and Jude Bellingham (ninth).
While the fourth player from Spain is Barcelona’s teenage starlet Lamine Yamal, who is 10th with USD43 million.
“Combined, the world’s ten highest-paid soccer players are set to earn an estimated USD945 million during the 2025-26 campaign,” Forbes said in a statement.
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