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Over the course of the last few summers, we’ve seen Juventus’ payroll go up and up and up, where it would stop we were never really sure. Then Juve go and sign Cristiano Ronaldo, a move that was never going to be anything remotely close to something considered a “value” kind of transfer.
On Tuesday, La Gazzetta dello Sport continued its annual tradition of releasing the financial details of all 20 Serie A teams and their respective payrolls.
You’ll never guess who the highest-paid player is!
And you’ll never guess which club has the highest payroll!
OK, so it’s not a surprise. Not even to somebody who just started following calcio over the last year or two. Juventus’ overall payroll of €219 million blows the rest of the competition completely out of the water, with only Inter a few 10s of millions away at €140 million. And, about as predictable as Claudio Marchisio being described as a very handsome man by anybody who comes across a picture of him, Ronaldo is far and away the highest-paid player in Italy’s top flight with a €31 million net salary.
Speaking of Ronaldo and Inter...
Ronaldo makes more than Inter Milan's starting lineup pic.twitter.com/9ecbKMStId
— SB Nation (@SBNation) September 4, 2018
Heh. Any opportunities that allows us to poke fun at Inter we can have, then let’s go ahead and have them!
To have a wage bill of €219 million, a club must have plenty of highly-paid players. And Juventus certainly have that. Of the eight highest-paid players in Serie A this season, six of them currently call the Italian champions their employer. When you limit it to the five largest net salaries, four of them are being paid by Juventus, with the only one not currently residing in Turin being that of Gonzalo Higuain. Behind Higuain is Paulo Dybala (€7 million), Miralem Pjanic and his brand new contract (€6.5 million) and Douglas Costa (€6 million).
Throw in Emre Can making €5.5 million, Leonardo Bonucci €5 million and a handful of regular starters hovering around €4 million and you probably get the idea of where we’re going with all of this.
In total, 12 of the top 20 salaries in Serie A belong to Juventus players.
Sure does make you wonder both how long this kind of big spending in terms of annual salaries can be sustainable for a club like Juventus as well as the fact that less than a decade ago this level of salary scale probably wasn’t even possible.