The extravagant former Juventus president Gianni Agnelli ran the Italian giants by the mantra: "Poor footballers are certainly overpaid. The good ones never earn enough."
Yet, even the good footballers seem grossly overpaid in the modern game.
Long gone are the days when Serie A commanded the best and most generously rewarded players. Instead, the financial focus in the game today is split between the Premier League and an aggressively expanding Saudi Arabia.
Here's the rundown of how much the world's best-paid players stand to earn this season, with some of the figures surely too rich even for the memory of Agnelli.
*All figures via Forbes
10. Harry Kane - £29.7m
Team: Bayern Munich
Club salary: £21.5m
Off-field earnings: £8.2m
Harry Kane's move to Bayern Munich was not a question of money - Tottenham Hotspur were prepared to significantly increase his £200,000-per-week salary with a new contract in the summer - but a shot at genuine silverware.
Bayern's most expensive signing of all time is hardly on a pittance in Bavaria but his campaign in Germany began with failure. After losing the DFL Supercup on Kane's debut, the national publication Bild ran the headline: "Kane here! Title gone!"
9. Kevin De Bruyne - £32.2m
Team: ManchesterCity
Club salary: £28.9m
Off-field earnings: £3.3m
By his own account, Kevin De Bruyne describes himself as normally "super chilled" until crossing the white line. "Once a referee has blown the whistle," he warned, "you see another Kevin."
De Bruyne had his game face on when he went into contract negotiations with Manchester City in 2021, securing a 30% bump after hiring Analytics FC to provide a statistical argument for his wage hike. Clearly, the powers that be at City don't subscribe to the old adage: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
8. Sadio Mane - £42.9m
Team: Al Nassr
Club salary: £39.6m
Off-field earnings: £3.3m
Long before he cashed in with an eye-watering move to Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr, Sadio Mane was earning far more money than he needed at Liverpool and Bayern Munich.
"Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes?" Mane asked in 2019. "What would that do for the world? I starved, I worked in the fields, I played barefoot, and I didn't go to school. Now I can help people."
After a generous bump in his wages - which are not subject to the same strict income tax that he would find in Europe - Mane can afford to help even more people back in his native Senegal.
7. Mohamed Salah - £43.7m
Team: Liverpool
Club salary: £28.9m
Off-field earnings: £14.8m
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which spearheaded the outrageous summer spending in the nation's revamped top flight, made no secret of their desire to bring Mohamed Salah to the kingdom.
However, the riches that have been able to tempt so many other players from Europe's leading leagues are not as decisive for an individual who already earns north of £40m per year.
6. Erling Haaland - £47.8m
Team: Manchester City
Club salary: £37.9m
Off-field earnings: £9.9m
For such a sharpshooter, Erling Haaland can be refreshingly blunt. "I do the same runs as I did as a 13-year-old," he insists. Although, a teenage Haaland was not pulling in eight digits each year.
The attacking centre-piece of Manchester City's treble winners is thought to earn most of his Premier League-leading salary via achievable bonuses that don't rely upon his deluge of goals.
5. Karim Benzema - £87.4m
Team: Al Ittihad
Club salary: £82.5m
Off-field earnings: £4.9m
By 2022, Karim Benzema had achieved all three of his life ambitions; buying his mother a house, playing for Real Madrid and hoisting aloft the Ballon d'Or.
With the bucket list ticked off, it may have been easier for Benzema to leave the European stage to join Al Ittihad. Prior to the PIF takeover, the club that pays Benzema £1.6m-per-week couldn't afford to fulfil the salaries of some employees for three months. No matter, so long as the multi-millionaire gets his slice.
4. Kylian Mbappe - £90.7m
Team: Paris Saint-Germain
Club salary: £74.2m
Off-field earnings: £16.5m
Kylian Mbappe has an intriguing relationship with money. The Nike athlete hasn't had to buy his own boots since he was ten and regularly leaves the house without a wallet or credit card.
Money may not be his motivation but that hasn't stopped the carefully cultivated Mbappe brand from making plenty of it - particularly after agreeing on an eye-watering new deal at PSG in 2022 which expires next summer.
3. Neymar - £92.4m
Team: Al Hilal
Club salary: £66.0m
Off-field earnings: £26.4m
Neymar's list of demands ahead of his transfer to Al Hilal in the summer is so extravagant it almost seems as though he's deliberately trying to put off his suitors.
On top of his £66m annual salary, Neymar supposedly demanded a 25-room mansion equipped with a swimming pool "at least 40 metres long" and three saunas, all managed by eight staff in tandem with his own personal chef.
If it was a bluff, Al Hilal called it by following through on the £77.6m acquisition of the 31-year-old.
2. Lionel Messi - £111.4m
Team: Inter Miami
Club salary: £53.6m
Off-field earnings: £57.8m
The story goes that Lionel Messi's father Jorge demanded Barcelona sign his international teammate Angel Di Maria. When the club had a symbolic €30m bid turned down, Messi Sr requested that his son be given the spare sum. Josep Maria Bartomeu limply obliged.
Messi's financial might has only grown since leaving Barcelona, with his new contract at Inter Miami partly funded by MLS broadcaster Apple.
On top of his club salary, Messi ranks as the most marketable footballer on the planet; bringing in £57.8m - more than the wage bill of seven Premier League clubs - from off-pitch earnings alone.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo - £214.5m
Team: Al Nassr
Club salary: £165.0m
Off-field earnings: £49.5m
To provide some inkling of perspective on Cristiano Ronaldo's obscene earning power, Al Nassr's captain generates more revenue on his own than all but 17 clubs in world football.
It's certainly a long way from the days when Ronaldo went to bed hungry in Sporting CP's academy, forced to skulk around the back door of the nearby McDonald's in search of free burgers.
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This article was originally published on 90min as The world's highest paid footballers in 2023.
