This silly season, the majority of transfer talk has been focused around one name: Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Reportedly, the striker is on the verge of joining Manchester United and is asking for an annual salary of $16.7 million. So, what is Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s current worth? How much money does the Swedish captain earn in a season?
Interim FIFA general secretary Markus Kattner has been fired for receiving lots and lots of money in secret bonuses.
For the previous 13 years, Kattner had served as FIFA's finance director, so he was in a perfect position to give himself a little extra million or several under the table.
FIFA's announcement was, um, succinct:
Earlier this year, the Bundesliga announced that the league had recorded its second-highest Bundesliga attendance ever. A total of 6,478,680 fans attended 153 matches over the first half of the season with an average of 42,344 per game. By contrast, the Premier League averaged 36,452 over the entirety of the season.
Leicester City lifted the Barclays Premier League trophy this past weekend. Their achievement of transforming from a bottom half side in the league to Champions of England in just one season is the stuff of magic, fairy tales, heroic feats, and any other oft-used sports and literature related cliche. However, and I don’t mean to burst the Leicester City underdog bubble already, it’s unlikely to happen in any of the tops leagues in Europe again for awhile, and the main reason is of course, money.
Forbes have released their annual list of the world’s richest clubs, and the results reveal a dramatic shift in global football. While Real Madrid occupy the top spot for the fourth consecutive year (valued at $3.645 billion), English clubs now occupy six of the top 10 spots. Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur have each seen their value increase by over 40% in one-year.
“Our country is in serious trouble. We’re having people coming in through the border that are not people that we want,” says Donald Trump in an audio clip from the Republican presidential candidate that’s being used to promote this summer’s Copa America Centenario.
The images and text that go with the audio make the speech, for the first time, seem reasonable. Marcos Rojo, Pablo Zabaleta, Lionel Messi and Javier Mascherano are seen disembarking from a plane, presumably landing on American soil for this summer’s tournament. The United States is indeed in serious trouble.
How are Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Romelu Lukaku so good? It must be the boots. Nike Mercurials to be exact. We all know that’s certainly not the case — there’s no question that the footballer makes the boots and not the other way around.
Lionel Messi may have gotten knocked out of the Champions League this year, but he earned a different kind of title that is sure to make him happy. Lionel Messi is the highest paid footballer in soccer – which makes him one of the highest paid athletes in the world.
Lionel Messi reportedly earned $83.4 million (€74 million, or £59.3 million) in 2015, which placed him higher than Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar, the #2 and #3 highest earning footballers, respectively. Neymar earned $49 million in 2015, while Ronaldo earned $76 million.
According to a report from the AS in Spain, David Beckham is looking to make Roberto Carlos manager of his new Miami MLS expansion club. The two spent four years together at Real Madrid and have remained great friends ever since.
A few weeks ago, US Soccer unveiled the new national team crest. Some people liked it. Some did not.
Ignoring the possibility US Soccer plagiarized the crest from a Florida youth baseball league, we wanted to get an actual expert opinion on the new crest. So we got five.