Al-Ahli forked out the cash in a deal reportedly worth up to £30m. In part of a huge summer exodus to Saudi Arabia's riches, Mahrez followed the likes of Karim Benzema, N'Golo Kante and Ruben Neves after Cristiano Ronaldo's head-turning transfer. Mahrez's contract runs until 2027 and sees him on just over £850,000 a week (£854,985) with a yearly sum sitting just under £45m (£44,459,240) for the Algerian national team captain's services.
Before he made a Saudi switch of his own in August 2023, Neymar signed a gargantuan contract extension to keep him at Paris Saint-Germain, ideally until 2025. Up to this point, the gifted Brazilian had been at the club since the 2017-18 term, when he decided to move out of the shadows of Lionel Messi at Barcelona and take centre stage at the Parc des Princes in a world-record fee move worth £200m.
Initially on an eye-watering weekly figure just shy of £710,000, his performances, paired with PSG's push for Champions League glory to add to their then-three Ligue 1 titles with the Brazilian, led to the club throwing a further four-year extension at the winger in 2021. His new deal signed in May of that year projected Neymar to highest-earner status at the capital club—with £923,212 (€1,923,077) a week, blasting his salary up to £48,002,352, or a more well-rounded €100m.
Neymar's PSG Contract |
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Date signed | May 8th, 2021 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2025 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £923,112 |
Per year (with or without bonus) | £48,002,352 |
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6Cristiano Ronaldo: Juventus
Contract length: 2018-2022
Cristiano Ronaldo swapped the white of Real Madrid for the additional black stripes of Juventus in 2018 in a 112 million euro (£99.2 million) transfer that shook the football world, making CR7 the fourth most expensive signing ever at the time.
The 33-year-old Portuguese icon signed a four-year deal with the then-Italian champions after winning four hampions League titles in his nine years at Real. In a new challenge, the Turin giants saw Ronaldo as a key to their own Lmission, although they'd ultimately come up short.
The first of this article's players to exceed a million a week, Ronaldo signed a contract that saw him earn €1,104,038, equating to €57,410,000 a year (just under £49m). It was a serious cost for what turned out to be two Serie A, a Coppa Italia crown and two Supercoppas. With that lack of European silverware, Ronaldo moved on to a homecoming with Manchester United in 2021 as Juve felt the pinch of the great's wages and he, himself, requested a move away in the final year of his deal.
Cristiano Ronaldo's Juventus Contract |
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Date signed | July 10th, 2018 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2022 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £940,320 |
Per year (with or without bonus) | £48,896,647 |
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5 Lionel Messi: Barcelona
Contract length: 2017-2021
In the 2017-18 season, speculation was rife over the Argentinian talisman's long-term future and whether it lay with Barcelona. Such was the angst as to whether the Camp Nou favourite would add to his bulging trophy cabinet that held eight LaLiga titles at the time, Barcelona pulled out all the stops to keep Messi in Catalonia.
November 2017 saw Messi pen a deal that would run until 2021, with the option of another year. In addition to his €70m-a-year wage, which sat at around £1.2m a week, Messi was also apparently handed a signing-on sum of €100m (£88.5m) as compensation for his troubles after his conviction for tax fraud.
With deals like this, you get no prizes for wondering how Barca got into the financial mess they see themselves in nowadays. In fact, Messi would eventually depart the Blaugrana for PSG, as the club could effectively no longer afford him and decided not to renew the star player's contract in August 2021 after 17 seasons owing to “financial and structural obstacles."
Lionel Messi's Barcelona Contract |
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Date signed | November 2017 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2021 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £1,162,911 |
Per year (with or without bonus) | £60,471,380 |
4 Kylian Mbappe: Paris Saint-Germain
Contract length: 2022-2025
Speaking of PSG, a club with well-lined pockets that they could splurge on Messi, showed their continued wealth in 2022 as they looked to ward off Real Madrid and other circling clubs from a want-away Kylian Mbappe.
This deal followed a mini-saga where Mbappe initially told the club that he was seeing out his contract at the end of the 2021-22 season. Persuaded to stay, he ultimately signed a two-year contract extension, with the option of a further year. This was reported to be around €1.4m, more than double the two-year €617,000-a-week deal he signed in 2019-20.
With this new deal, Mbappe earned €72m (£61m) a year for the last three years before opting against the further 12 months as the allure of Real Madrid in the summer of 2024 had European glory firmly in his sights.
Kylian Mbappe's PSG Contract |
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Date signed | May 21st, 2022 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2025 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £1,179,290 |
Per year (with or without bonus) | £61,323,090 |
3 Neymar: Al Hilal
Contract length: 2023-2025
The second time he's featured on this list, Neymar's latest contract is simply enormous and somewhat overshadows a skilled career that has been debatably traded for riches.
Toeing the line between money chasing and performing on centre stage for a number of seasons before the move, the 31-year-old 'Prince who never became King' joined Al Hilal for a transfer of 90 million euros (£77.6 million) plus add-ons in August 2023.
Although a mere two-year deal for the tricky, yet injury-prone star, the contract sees Ney bag £1,637,903 a week, adding up to just under £86m per annum. Clearly, Al Hilal have got their money's worth so far, as the man who helped PSG to 13 trophies, including five Ligue 1 titles, only played five games before rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament while on international duty in October 2023.
Neymar's Al Hilal Contract |
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Date signed | August 15th, 2023 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2025 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £1,637,903 |
Per year (with or without bonus) | £85,170,958 |
2 Karim Benzema: Al-Ittihad
Contract length: 2023-2026
Following in the footsteps of a man he shared the pitch with 342 times, as well as 76 direct goal contributions in Cristiano Ronaldo, Ballon d'Or winner Karim Benzema signed for Al-Ittihad in June 2023.
Benzema signed after his Real Madrid exit, of which the club allowed him to leave a year early. The striker who won 25 trophies - including five Champions Leagues and four La Ligas - in 14 years, agreed to a three-year deal that saw him take home just under £1.7m a week. His yearly rate is believed to be just over £85m. Benzema scored 354 goals for Real, second only to Cristiano Ronaldo, and has already started life in Saudi Arabia with nine goals in 21 league games.
Karim Benzema's Al-Ittihad Contract |
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Date signed | July 1st, 2023 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2026 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £1,637,903 |
Per year (with or without bonus) | £85,170,958 |
1 Cristiano Ronaldo: Al-Nassr
Contract length: 2023-2025
Cristiano Ronaldo arrives as the highest paid footballer in the world. As explained by Al-Jazeera, Saudi Arabia remained the only team to beat eventual winners Argentina at the 2022 World Cup, yet that same year still had time for more surprises for the country, as Ronaldo led a new Saudi revolution in signing for Al-Nassr.
Signing on a two-and-a-half-year contract, Ronaldo's services set the Riyadh club back nearly £3.3m a week, with a yearly total salary reaching just over £170m.
He is currently the world's highest earning athlete, and adds this serious influx of cash to his already massive £505m career earnings. Additionally, if this wasn't enough, the 39-year-old forward makes a further £45.8m in off-field sponsors and exploits.
Cristiano Ronaldo's Al-Nassr Contract |
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Date signed | June 1st, 2023 |
Date of expiry | June 30th, 2025 |
Per week (with or without bonus) | £3,275,806 |
Per year (with or without bonus) |
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However, it's not just the clubs outside of Europe that are paying the big bucks. Manchester City paid superstar striker Erling Haaland a handsome fee to do what he does best in the Premier League, while Neymar received a humongous regular fee to ply his trade at Ligue 1's Paris Saint-Germain. With that in mind, here are the biggest contracts ever given out in football history. 
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