By Nick Harris 23 December 2019 Lionel Messi’s  Barcelona have retained their status as the best paid team in all of global sport, measured by average basic pay in their first-team squad, according to Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) for 2019, published today. Barca’s average pay is just over £9.8m, with Real Madrid in second place […]

By Sportingintelligence 20 November 2015 Few figures in world football are as widely respected as the late England manager, Bobby Robson, and testament to his enduring popularity is the fact that so many stars of the modern game continue to contribute to fund-raising in his memory. This year’s edition of the Sir Bobby Auction provides […]

By Nick Harris 2 August 2010 Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s most popular athlete in all of global sport according to new research by sportingintelligence to coincide with Facebook reaching the landmark of 500m active users. Social networking is increasingly important in the promotion and marketing of sports stars and teams. Thus Facebook, now the […]

By Pete Wilson 4 May 2010 The high value of sports stars’ images as bankable intellectual property has been underlined by a decision by Madame Tussauds in London to spend £150,000 on a waxwork of Cristiano Ronaldo – to go on display a full year after he left British shores to sign for Real Madrid […]

11 January 2010 Manchester United’s holding company, Red Football Ltd, today announced pre-tax profits of £48.2m for the financial year to the end of June 2009, a year-on-year turnaround from comparable losses of £21.4m in the year to June 2008. The £80m sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid in the summer underpinned the latest […]

In 2012, Grant Wahl wrote a profile piece about FC Barcelona for Sports Illustrated. It was headlined The World’s Team and for it, he was given unparalleled week-long access to the club’s new training facility – which he memorably titles ‘The Hogwarts of Soccer’. This was FC Barcelona in 2012, basking in the afterglow of […]

Brought to you in association with the UK Concrete Show (“The whole of the concrete industry under one roof!“) . By Martin Kelner 13 June 2016 Oh Clive, what were you thinking? Justice for the England Eleven? Really? I had to wind back to check that really was the venerable ITV commentator’s reaction to Eric Dier’s free-kick goal for […]

By Andy Carpenter 10 June 2016 If England’s squad were a single footballer and you compared his goal-scoring record for the 2015-16 season with his Euro 2016 rivals in a Golden Shoe-style contest, then he would be starting the tournament as the continent’s hottest striker. England would be top of the table ahead of Germany in second place, then Russia, […]

By Nick Harris 10 June 2016 Two interesting and credible studies published this week have attempted to quantify the cost (and separately, the value) of the 24 squads that will contest Euro 2016, which begins this evening in Paris when hosts France face Romania at the Stade de France. The first was conducted by Profit […]

By Joel Oberstone 11 January 2016 We are terribly spoiled, having the two greatest footballers of the modern era playing at the same time in the same league. As fans this allows us to marvel at the immense talents of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the only two genuine contenders to Pele and Maradona for […]