Khaberni - The veteran Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo once again tops Forbes' list of the highest-paid football players, placing him among three professionals in Saudi Arabia on the top ten list for the 2025-2026 season.
This is the sixth time in the last decade that Ronaldo has topped the Forbes list, coming just over a week after Bloomberg announced that the 40-year-old player had become the first billionaire in the world of football.
With earnings from on and off the field estimated at around $280 million, Ronaldo, who plays for Saudi's Al-Nassr, will earn more than twice as much as his former rival, Argentine star Lionel Messi, who holds the second spot with earnings estimated at $130 million, though the majority of this comes from outside the playing field rather than his salary with his current team, Inter Miami.
In third place is another player in the Saudi League, specifically with the league champions Al-Ittihad, Frenchman Karim Benzema, who earns $104 million annually thanks to his hefty contract with his club.
The third professional player in the Saudi League on the top ten highest earners list is Ronaldo’s teammate at Al-Nassr, the Senegalese striker Sadio Mane, who earns an estimated $54 million, placing him in eighth position on Forbes' list.
In fact, the Saudi League has lost a player from the top ten list compared to last season's list, which is the Brazilian Neymar who left Al Hilal in January to return to his starting club Santos.
Neymar ranked third in the previous list after his earnings were estimated at $110 million for the 2024-2025 season, but now he apparently earns only $38 million, most of which comes from deals unrelated to Santos.
Despite the strength and wealth of the English Premier League, which saw its clubs spend a record amount of 2.6 billion pounds ($3.5 billion) on transfers this summer, only two players from the "Premier League" managed to make it into the top ten, namely Norwegian Erling Haaland, Manchester City's top scorer who came in fifth, and Egyptian Mohamed Salah, Liverpool's top scorer and the title holder who came in seventh.
The league most represented in the top ten is the Spanish league with three players from Real Madrid being French Kilian Mbappe (fourth), Brazilian Vinicius Junior (sixth), and English Jude Bellingham (ninth).
The other player from the Spanish league is Barcelona's young star Lamine Jamal, who ranks tenth with $43 million.
Forbes stated in its release, "The world's top ten highest-paid football players are expected to earn a combined estimate of around $945 million during the 2025-2026 season."
