The 10 highest paid footballers in the world in 2022: Ronaldo 2nd, Messi 3rd...

Professional football is a lucrative business in 2022 and the 10 highest paid players on the planet - who play for clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool - are raking in huge sums in both in salaries and sponsorship offers.

Salaries for top footballers have risen exponentially in recent years, especially after huge multinational corporations, oligarchs and oil states entered the scene as club owners.

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Players have also taken advantage of the game's popularity to sign large sponsorship deals, which in some cases can earn them almost as much as their salary.

Here we take a look at the 10 highest earning soccer stars on the planet in 2022, with figures from Sportico's Kurt Badenhausen*, an expert on professional sports earnings. Note: According to Sportico numbers, we use US dollars as our currency.

10. Antoine Griezmann - $27.5 million ($22 million salary, $5.5 million endorsements)

Griezmann is in a very strange situation at the moment.

A clause in the contract that Atletico signed to bring him back from Barcelona on loan states that if he plays more than half of the matches for which he is available during the entire two-year loan period, Atletico is forced to pay €40 million to sign him permanently. This clause also defines playing a game as playing 45 minutes or more.

As such, Atletico are only deploying him for around half an hour plus stoppage time in their games this season and are trying to renegotiate the clause with Barca at the same time.

Pretty unfortunate for Griezmann, but he's still pocketing his $22m salary and will be fresh for France's defense of their world title in Qatar, so we shouldn't think he's crying himself to sleep at night.

9. Kevin De Bruyne – $29 million ($25.5 million salary, $3.5 million endorsements)

De Bruyne has almost certainly been the best player in the world's top-grossing league for the past five seasons and plays for a club owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family, so it would be weird if he didn't. was not in this top 10.

8. Raheem Sterling - $29.4 million ($21.4 million salary, $8 million endorsements)

While Sterling didn't earn as much as De Bruyne at Man City and is still not at his new club Chelsea, his marketability puts him above the Belgian here.

Sterling has big deals with New Balance for his boots and with Apple for all his tech needs, while anyone reading this in the UK will have seen the England international standing in a neon green tunnel and cheering him on to have a shave in the halftime commercial break at some point.

7. Andres Iniesta – $30 million ($23 million, $7 million endorsements)

This one shocked us a bit. But the little man is big in Japan.

Former Barcelona star Iniesta has played for Vissel Jobe since 2018 and signed a new contract in 2021 which will keep him at the club until 2023. Given the salary on offer, it's no surprise he has decided to stay.

Iniesta also has sponsorship deals with major Japanese brands such as Nissan, Asics and Konami, as well as GeneLife, which is, according to their website, a company that "focuses on providing your personal genetic information to you. enabling better health and lifestyle choices for disease prevention.”

It's a bit like Black Mirror if you ask us.

Anyway, Iniesta's immediate goal will not be to advertise this product line, but to keep his team in the J1 League. As of this writing, Vissel Kobe is one point clear of the relegation zone with five games remaining.

6. Eden Hazard - $31.1 million ($28.6 million salary, $2.5 million endorsements)

This was really, really not planned for Hazard at Real Madrid. Since his £103m move to the Spanish capital, the Belgian has scored just seven goals in three seasons and a few. Watching last season's Champions League final from the bench must have been particularly infuriating.

As they were with Gareth Bale, Madrid are forced to pay a huge salary for a player who doesn't feature regularly. However, they can only blame themselves.