Soccer star demands the most ridiculous salary ever - report
Your everyday American has about a 1 in 1,750,000,000 chance of winning Publishers Clearing House’s $7,000-a-Week for Life lottery.
That’s about a .00000006 percent chance of Ed McMahon’s replacement knocking on your door with an oversized novelty check. Or in other words, you have a significantly better chance of being struck twice by lightning than you have of winning $7,000 a week.
According to the London Times, Paris Saint-Germain soccer star Neymar is asking for exactly that. He’s just asking for a little more than $7,000.
Neymar is reportedly demanding that his team pay him $1.39 million per week, even though he’s recovering from a foot injury that will likely keep him out until May.
Having just joined the team in August amid fanfare, Neymar is already leveraging rumored interest from soccer powerhouse Real Madrid into a potentially lucrative pay raise from PSG.
Neymar, 26, currently earns more than $700,000 a week, according to Goal. That’s already a staggering figure to rake in each week, but he’s still interested in tacking on one more digit to that weekly income.
From all indications, Real Madrid’s interest in Neymar is nothing more than a rumor, but it’s still providing the Brazilian star with leverage.
Neymar, unquestionably one of the best soccer players in the world, has had a rocky transition since leaving FC Barcelona for PSG.
Reports have surfaced that he has butted heads with teammates. In particular, he was caught publicly bickering with Edinson Cavani over who got to kick penalties and free-kicks.
It seemed like the textbook case of a new star clashing with the established star upon joining a new team.
Aside from bad team chemistry, there’s the aforementioned injury that’s currently sidelining Neymar. He needed surgery to fix a fractured pinky toe and is also nursing ligament damage in his ankle.
For all of his troubles and talents, Paris Saint-Germain was eliminated from championship contention in the Champions League.
For what it’s worth, PSG has denied the rumors about Neymar’s alleged pay demands, per AS. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise considering PSG paid a record-smashing $263 million just for the right to pay him $748,000 a week.
Just reading that rumour that Neymar wants a pay rise at PSG? WTF! How much does a man who is injured need to have? He could buy a country already…. imagine if all Premier league players regardless of nationality would contribute 1% of their salary to NHS?
— Robo_Racer_ (@robo_racer_) March 18, 2018
For all the grousing some people do about overpaid athletes in North America, it’s even worse abroad.
According to Forbes, soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are two of the three highest-paid athletes in the world (LeBron James is the other). When taking endorsement money out of the equation and looking at just salaries and winnings, Ronaldo and Messi are easily the two highest-paid at $58 million and $53 million, respectively.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
