Though the Premier League always pays out the biggest bucks across the board, it is not uncommon for La Liga to boast the highest paid individual in world football.
Examples of this go right back to the Nineties, leading into Real Madrid’s Galactico era, and then on to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
That trend may have stopped for the time being, with Erling Haaland’s wages at Manchester City unparalleled in world football, but in truth we’re quibbling. There’s really very little between the Striking Viking’s income and the French megastar who tops our list here.
The primary reason for this of course is due to Real Madrid and Barcelona’s willingness to shell out astronomical sums to secure the very best players around, and this is particularly true of Los Blancos.
Who Are The Highest Paid La Liga Players?
But there is also a lot to be said of La Liga itself, the only league to reside in the Premier League’s orbit from a financial point of view.
Last season’s total revenue across Spain’s top-flight exceeded £4 billion with the players naturally grabbing the lion’s share.
Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid (£520,000 per week)
The difference between the World Cup winner’s salary in the Spanish capital and Haaland’s yearly wage amounts to a shade over £4500. For the majority of us, that’s a sizable proportion of our income. To them, it’s a good night out.
Having long been linked with Los Blancos, Mbappe agreed to switch from PSG in the spring of 2024, a move that made headlines across the globe.
With the forward running down his contract in Paris, meaning no transfer fee was involved, the bulk of the coverage focused on his colossal pay-day, and this highlighted that a percentage of his income would derive from a £128m signing-on fee, paid out over the course of his five-year deal.
Add in sizable bonuses and unquestionably Mbappe is one of the richest players to ever don a pair of boots. In the 26-year-old’s case that’s Nike, for which he’s paid £14m a year. Nice work if you can get it.
Robert Lewandowski, Barcelona (£516,000 per week)
Such was Barcelona’s financial difficulties in the summer of 2022 speculation was rife that they couldn’t register any new signings, if any at all were forthcoming.
Then they went out and purchased the most prolific front-man of his generation for £42.5m, offering him an eye-watering salary for good measure.
No-one could possibly argue that the prolific Pole wasn’t worth either outlay, breaking all manner of Bundesliga goal-scoring records for Bayern Munich and securing the European Golden Shoe for two years running leading up to his big-money transfer.
In 12 seasons in Germany, he was nailed on in the football betting to convert, bagging a staggering 322 league goals for Bayern and Borussia Dortmund, at a rate of a goal every 96 minutes.
Unsurprisingly, his strike-rate has not diminished in Spain, Barca benefiting from 101 goals to date in return for £26.8m a year in wages.
David Alaba, Real Madrid (£373, 000 per week)
Having joined Real on a free from Bayern Munich in May, 2021, Alaba has a year remaining on his current contract and all the talk has it that the player intends to stay, even on reduced terms. The versatile defender turned 33 this summer.
When Alaba signed four years ago, he was at the peak of his powers and generally considered one of the best players in the world. Moreover, Los Blancos had no choice other than to offer sky-high wages to lure him from a fellow European superpower.
Now? Now the circumstances have changed because – regardless of his heightened calibre - it is entirely unrealistic to expect another club to pay so handsomely for an aging talent in a position he plays.
Tumbling off this list while still accruing silverware in Madrid is his best possible option.
By the time his contract expires next May, the Austrian will have earned £97m from his time in Spain in wages alone. So he probably won’t be too heartbroken by a dip in salary.
Vinicius Jr, Real Madrid (£346,000 per week)
The Brazilian flyer grew up in poverty, moving in with his uncle as a young boy so as to be closer to Flamengo’s training ground. This was to save on his travel fares. He now commands £18m a year in basic wages.
Transferring to Real in 2018 for £40m, he has more than lived up to the hype that accompanied the move, firing Los Blancos to three league titles and two Champions League triumphs. With his searing pace, physical strength and dribbling skills, on his day he is simply unplayable.
To the 25-year-old’s enormous credit, he has parlayed some of his fortune into good causes, setting up a charity that helped educate disadvantaged children.
In 2024 he became only the second footballer – after Pele – to be appointed a UNESCO ambassador.
Jude Bellingham (£346,000 per week)
With a Bundesliga Player of the Season award on his shelf, and a burgeoning reputation that made his ascendancy to mega-stardom a formality, Bellingham had his pick of every elite club in the summer of 2023, with Manchester City and Real Madrid heading the queue.
In the event, England’s highly prized midfielder chose to remain on the continent, leaving Borussia Dortmund for a whopping nine-figure sum and seriously upgrading his bank balance into the bargain.
He may trail to three team-mates in the top earning stakes but Bellingham still accrues in excess of two grand per hour at the Bernabeu.
His fortune however tells only a fraction of the tale. Routinely, Real Madrid are short-priced in the La Liga betting but when he starts, those odds get even tighter. That’s how important he has become to the most successful club in modern times.
*Credit for the image belongs to Alamy*
