Juventus star Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest earner in the Serie A and pockets three times more than the next best-paid player in the league, Daily Mail reports.
Ronaldo is, however, yet to justify that premium, having failed to score for the Serie A champions in his first three outings since moving in a £100m transfer from Real Madrid in the summer.
The 33-year-old saw his pay packet get bumped up dramatically after swapping the Spanish capital for northern Italy, largely owing to Fiat agreeing to shoulder the burden of his huge £28m-a-year wages.
Only Lionel Messi (£40.5m a year) at Barcelona and Neymar (£31.7m) at Paris Saint-Germain bag more money than Ronaldo.
According to a report in Gazzetta dello Sport, Ronaldo picks up a massive pay check of £538,000 every week.
The wages of other big-name players plying their trade in Italy are dwarfed in comparison to Ronaldo’s earnings with Gonzalo Higuain some way behind as the second-highest earner in the league.
The Argentinian striker still picks up a mammoth £8.5m per year (approximately £165,000 per week), after tax following his move to AC Milan from Juventus.
Paulo Dybala is next on the list, taking home €7m a year, while former Liverpool midfielder Emre Can is in eighth place on €5m a year.
Juventus have already made a decent return on Ronaldo in a marketing sense, but will surely be hoping that he soon starts to fire on the pitch, according to JOE.co.uk.
The forward is yet to score in Serie A, despite taking 23 shots in his three matches so far, which included another fruitless outing at Parma on Saturday.
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The top 11 paid players in the league are mainly dominated by Juve players with only AC Milan’s Gianluigi Donnarumma (£5.4m/year), Napoli’s Lorenzo Insigne (£4.1m/year), Inter’s Mauro Icardi (£4m/year) and Roma’s Edin Dzeko (£4m/year) featuring on the list.
Juve’s wage bill is the largest in Italy at €219m this season, substantially more than Milan at €140m, Inter Milan with €119m, Roma at €100m and Napoli in fifth, with €94m.
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