Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has featured in the latest issue of Forbes and is now among the top five most paid footballers on the planet. He is only behind Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar in the list of footballers.
Forbes has just released the full list of world’s highest-paid athletes. Roger Federer leads the way with $106m of pre-tax earnings. Cristiano Ronaldo ($105m), Lionel Messi ($104m) and Neymar ($95m) are the next athletes in the list. No other footballer makes it to the top 20 of the recent Forbes list.
Mohamed Salah is 34th in the list of athletes with $35m pre-tax earnings. This includes $23.1m as salary & winnings and $12m in winnings. The Egyptian signed a five-year deal with Liverpool in 2018 which was highly incentivised. This has led to him earning a lot from the incentives from Liverpool. This has made him the highest earner in Liverpool as well as in the Premier League.
Some of the Egyptian’s sponsors are Adidas, DHL International, Electronic Arts, ExxonMobil and Vodafone-USD. Last year his sponsor Adidas made an advertisement of him walking on water and made him the face of their iconic Adicolor line of sportswear, inspired by 1970s.
According to Forbes, salaries of the top-earners from around the world have massively decreased due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Many sporting events have been cancelled or temporarily suspended for the first time since the Second World War. The top 100 highest-paid athletes earned a total $3.6 billion this year which a massive 9% decrease. This is due to the wage cuts players around Europe are taking due to football’s suspension in March.
