Cristiano Ronaldo ultimately transferred to La Liga giants Barcelona!
As July began, Barça could hardly wait to officially announce this world-shaking transfer of a superstar.
This meant that Barcelona would possess the most luxurious and top-tier collection of superstars in the world in the new season. Even a star like Sánchez would have no choice but to sit on the bench at Camp Nou, showing just how astonishing Barça's squad was.
The transfer fee reached one hundred million euros, matching the world transfer-fee record Yang Yang had set four years earlier when he joined Real Madrid from Liverpool. Not only that, the Portuguese's annual salary at Barcelona would reach an astonishing sixteen million euros—after tax!
Just this February, Barcelona had reached a contract-extension agreement with Messi, raising his release clause to an astonishing two hundred and fifty million euros while also increasing his after-tax annual salary to sixteen million euros. In European Football, that was second only to Real Madrid's Yang Yang and Anzhi's Eto'o in the Russian Premier League.
Now, Barça was giving Cristiano Ronaldo the same salary package as Messi, and both figures were after tax. This was undoubtedly astonishing, because it meant Barça would be shouldering an even heavier wage burden.
After Cristiano Ronaldo joined Barça, Yang Yang topped the world's player salary rankings with an after-tax annual salary of twenty-five million euros. Real Madrid was still actively negotiating a contract extension with him, but this time Yang Yang had not asked for a raise. He wanted to maintain the current situation.
Eto'o ranked second with twenty million euros. Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were tied for third, followed by Paris Saint-Germain's Ibrahimovic, Barça's Iniesta, and Neymar, whose annual salaries were all estimated to be around fifteen million euros.
In other words, Barça occupied four of the top