Paris Saint-Germain completed the signing of Lionel Messi on Tuesday evening on a two-year contract, with the option of a third year.
Initial reports suggest that the contract is worth around an astonishing €35 million per year after tax.
That figure equates to a total of just under £620,000 per week – which makes it one of the biggest contracts in football history.
The signing of Messi adds to what has been a superb transfer window for the French giants.
Prior to the Messi announcement, the club had already signed Gianluigi Donnarumma, Sergio Ramos and Georginio Wijnaldum on free transfers.
They also paid Inter Milan an initial fee of €60m for Achraf Hakimi.
The Daily Mail has reported (via Salary Sport) that PSG’s wage bill stands at £256m with the signing of Messi – the highest of any sports team on the planet.
They also report that the combined value of Donnarumma and Ramos’s contracts is £29.2m.
Taking the competition out of sport
Now, a report from The Independent has revealed they were told that as far back as 2017, it has been one of PSG’s ambitions to raise wages and fees to such high levels that “fewer and fewer clubs could compete”.
That same summer, of course, the Parisians completed the signings of Kylian Mbappe from Monaco and Neymar from Barcelona.
The Neymar deal was – and still is – comfortably the biggest transfer fee ever paid for a player.
PSG shelled out an astonishing £200m to sign the Brazilian from Barcelona. To put that into context, the previous world record fee was the £89m deal that brought Paul Pogba to Manchester United.
Barca then spent an initial fee of £96.8m to sign Ousmane Dembele as Neymar’s replacement. That has since gone up to nine figures, with appearance bonuses part of the deal.
Then came Mbappe. Initially signing on loan from Monaco, he made his move to PSG permanent the following summer for a fee of around £166m.
According to Transfermarkt, six other transfers have broken the £100m barrier since Neymar joined PSG.
What the Messi deal has once again proved is that PSG are one of the most attractive clubs to join in world football when it comes to prospective signings – and that few clubs can compete on their level.
Featured Image Credit: Getty
