Lionel Messi is one of the best footballers in the world and he is currently regarded by many as the greatest footballer of all time ahead of his career rival Cristiano Ronaldo. Lionel Messi’s Net Worth has been changing year over year as his income continues to grow and his earnings will keep soaring because of his strong brand.
The Argentine and Barcelona football icon has won everything in club football and all the personal honours that can come with it. As he is raking in the goals and the medals for Barcelona, he is also raking in the money, the awards, and the prestige for himself.
Lionel Messi’s Earnings compared to other athletes
According to the list of 100 celebrities highest earners in the world published by Forbes in May 2020, Lionel Messi is said to be the 5th highest-earning celebrity and 3rd highest-earning athlete in the world, behind his 35-year-old rival Cristiano Ronaldo.
The report said the 32-year-old Argentine forward has earned about $104 million before 6th of April 2020 and most of the earnings came from his current contract with Barcelona which pays him $80 million per year.
What is Lionel Messi’s weekly salary ?
Based on the contract he signed with Barcelona in November 2017, Lionel Messi earns £500,000 ($610k/€565k) every week at the club. Before he signed the contract, he was earning £336,000 ($410k/€397k) per week. That means that Messi makes £2 million per month (every 4 weeks) wages. Barcelona was able to afford to pay Messi this much only because the club sold Neymar to PSG for a huge world-record transfer fee of $275 million in 2017.
Lionel Messi Net Worth
The Argentine is a talented football star, and the reward of being the best came with a financial reward that sets him apart from many other footballers around the world. As of 2020, Lionel Messi’s Net Worth is $400 million and £309 in pounds.
Messi and His deals
Lionel Messi currently has a contract with Barcelona which will expire in June 2021. He signed the contract in November 2017. The release clause for the contract was set at €700 million.
Besides Messi’s current contract with Barcelona, Lionel Messi has a lifetime contract with sportswear making company Addidas just like the lifetime deal Cristiano Ronaldo has with a rival sportswear making company, Nike.
Adidas’ lifetime contract is a huge part of Lionel Messi’s net worth.
Lionel Messi has a standing lifetime deal with Adidas, a German-based sportswear maker. The Barcelona star is expected to earn more than $18 million a year on the deal for life, a source disclosed. Also, the terms of the contract are expected to change in his favor.
The 32-year-old Barcelona star also has a sponsorship deal with a bottling company Pepsi, Gillette, and Turkish Airlines. More so, the Barcelona star has sponsorship deals with Gatorade, Huawei, and Mastercard. He is also an ambassador of UNICEF. Forbes put his total earning from endorsement deals at $32 million in 2020.
Messi’s investments
Messi has luxurious houses in Spain and Argentina. He recently ventured into the fashion business by launching his clothing line in 2019. The Argentine also has a superstore and other businesses in Spain and Argentina. It is safe to say that Messi has a lot of stock portfolio that many may not know off. A wealthy man of his caliber would be divested all around and have money around the world.
Who is richer Ronaldo or Lionel Messi?
The football star is not so open with the businesses he runs outside football, hence, it is saved to sum his total net worth to at least $500 million. This means that Ronaldo is far richer than Messi as his net worth is placed at $1 billion, making him the first active player to be a billionaire in dollars.
Lionel Messi built his wealth from playing football, he got paid a lot of money over his football career and he used the money and popularity to seal other deals that made him even wealthier than most of his teammates. Messi became Barcelona team captain during the 2018-2019 football season. As the best player in the La Liga league, Messi took over the captainship after Andres Iniesta left the club.
In November 2017, the Argentine’s most valuable current player became the highest-paid footballer in the La Liga league as soon as he agreed to a contract extension unit year 2021.
What is Lionel Messi’s social media handle?
Messi is one of the most popular footballers in the world, besides Cristiano Ronaldo, he is the next popular footballer on social media. Messi has 157 thousand follows on Instagram as of July 2020. Lionel Messi’s Instagram handle is @leomessi , the link to his IG page is below.
Lionel Messi Tax Evasion drama
Lionel Messi has been one of the most scandal-free superstars across the world until in 2016 when he was hit by tax evasion saga. The saga started when Messi and his father, Jorge Horacio, who acts as the senior agent of the footballer, were accused of evading about €4.2 million in taxes. They were allegedly using offshore shell companies in Belize, Uruguay, and Switzerland to hide sponsorship income.
In July 2016, a court in Spain found Messi and his father guilty of the allegation. They were both sentenced to 21 months in prison for three counts of tax fraud. In addition to the sentence, the court ordered Lionel Messi to pay €2 million fine while the court ordered Messi’s father to pay €1.5 million fine.
Messi and his father were not pleased with the judgment, hence, they decided to appeal it at the Supreme Court in Spain. Unfortunately for Messi and Jorge Horacio, the apex court affirmed the judgment. However, the court agreed to reduce Messi and his father’s sentence to 15 months after they had paid the taxes they were accused of owing.
Since Spanish law allows people who have been sentenced to less than two years in prison to serve their sentence as probation, Messi and his father did not go to jail. Later on, their sentence was lifted after Barcelona’s football icon paid €250,000 and his father paid €180,000 to the Spanish government.
Early Life of Lionel Messi and His Career
Lionel Messi was born on 24 June 1987 in Rosario, Argentina. He is the third child out of the four children of Mr. Jorge Horacio and Mrs. Celia Cuccittini.
Messi’s passion for football was ignited very early in life as he had elder brothers Rodrigo and Matías who were very much in the game. Hence, at 4-year-old, he started playing for a local football club known as club Grandoli in Rosario. While at the club, his father served as his coach.
At age 6, he joined the biggest club in his hometown, Newell’s Old Boys. He reportedly scored 500 goals while at the club. His set was tagged “The Machine of ’87”.
At age 10, the family of Lionel Messi was hit by the biggest fear of their lives as Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. The treatment was so expensive that his parents’ income and contributions from other parties became inadequate.
He would have joined another Argentine club, River Plate if they were able to afford his treatment. Due to the economic challenges in the country at the time, they were not able to do so.
When it became obvious that Lionel Messi could not find help in Argentina, his parents began to look elsewhere. They decided to take him to Catalonia, Spain for football trials in Barcelona. When he got to the club, though his body stature was not encouraging, the club was impressed with his skills.
Barcelona agreed to keep him and fund his treatment which they did and they enrolled him at the prestigious Barcelona’s youth academy, La Masia, at age 13. He got his first professional contract with Barcelona in December 2000.
Hence, the rest of Messi’s family relocated to Barcelona and lived in an apartment not too far from Camp Nou. After a lengthy contract tussle between Barcelona and Messi’s former club Newell’s Old Boys, Messi was allowed to settle down to face his career.
However, he encountered another crisis when his mother left with the rest of his family back to Argentina. Though his father remained with him in Spain, he became homesick. He recovered from that and he was later inducted into the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) in February 2002 which gave him permission to play club football at any level as a foreigner in Spain.
Due to how good he was at Barcelona’s youth team, he gained speedy promotion to the Barcelona’s senior team and had his first full season with the club in the 2002-2003 season. Due to his exploits at the club at such a tender age, Arsenal football club came for him but he decided to stay with Barcelona even when his closest friend at the club Cesc Fàbregas agreed to join the Premier League club. And as they say, the rest is history.
Lionel Messi, his wife Antonella Roccuzzo and Children
Just like how Lionel Messi is faithful to Barcelona and his football career, so he is to Antonella Roccuzzo, his beloved wife, and the mother of his three children.
They are childhood lovers who are from the same hometown Rosario. According to available data, Messi and Roccuzzo had known themselves when the footballer was 5-year-old as Roccuzzo is a cousin of Messi’s best friend, Lucas Scaglia.
Though they are always referred to as childhood lovers, their relationship became public in January 2009, 9 years after Messi had left Argentina for Spain. Between those years, Roccuzzo had reportedly grown cold feet in the relationship and had started seeing someone else. However, she had to leave the person to return to Messi when the Barcelona star returned to Argentina for the first time since he left the country in 2000.
Lionel Messi ignored his wife’s past and rekindled his love for her. Hence, Roccuzzo relocated to Spain and stayed with Messi as his lover when he has become an established player in Barcelona. On 2 November 2012, she gave birth to Messi’s first child, a bouncing baby boy named Thiago.
In less than three years after, Lionel Messi and Roccuzzo welcomed another bouncing baby boy on 11 September 2015 named Mateo.
In less than two years after, 30 June 2017 to be precise, Lionel Messi wedded Roccuzzo in a luxurious ceremony. They took the celebration to a luxurious hotel in their hometown, known as Hotel City Center. Most of his superstar friends were in attendance, including Neymar and Suarez, in a grand wedding that had about 260 guests.
In less than a year after the wedding, Roccuzzo gave birth to their third child on 10 March 2018 named Ciro. Lionel Messi had to miss Barcelona match against Malaga to be on her side when Ciro was born.
They all live happily in Messi’s One and Zero mansion in Catalonia, Spain. While his parents are still alive and kicking in his mansion in Rosario. His father only visits Spain whenever he is needed as Messi’s agent.
Lionel Messi Net Worth will keep changing due to the complexity of his brand, he earns money from many areas of life and he will continue to be relevant even when he retires.
Still wondering if Lionel Messi is the best footballer in the world? watch the video below.
At 33 years old, Messi is still one of the best player in the world and he recently won the 2019 Ballon d’Or award. An award that he dominated more than any other player in the world. Messi has won the Ballon d’Or award 6 times.
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