Ranking the 30 biggest salaries in L1 in 2024: PSG far ahead, OM and OL break the bank

Mbappé is alone in the world

With the departure of Lionel Messi and Neymar last summer, Kylian Mbappé sits at the top of the Championship wage rankings, making it look like a Formula 1 race with Bondi cracking the role of Max Verstappen.

Olympic year

“Classic” Parisian salaries remain very high, even if only one remains insane and the PSG payroll is better controlled. Although far behind, OM and OL were not stingy. Did Marseille pull out all the stops to lure Alexis Sanchez (€500,000/month)? He offered a lot to his successor Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and gave Joaquin Correa almost as much as Chile, twenty minutes in L1 from the end of November.

As for Lyon, he translated his hyperactive winter into wages, during which he was the highest-spending club in Europe (€56 million). Three of their January recruits appear in their top 10, including Nemanja Matic, who joins Alexandre Lacazette at the very top of the Ron pyramid, on half a million a month.

And then there are Monegasque salaries, which are a bit misleading in terms of foreign players, for whom gross and net of tax are not far off.

Gaps or bites

Then, there are those who have potentially big tools but refuse to splash out, like Rennes and Nice, where some of them earn around €200,000 per month, without bonuses.

And then there are others. And there, the gap widens. Of the 12 most “modest” clubs in the Championship, only 3 players pass the €200,000 monthly mark: Nantes’ Moussa Sissoko and Lensois’ Bryce Samba and Elie Wahi. This is not much, especially for certain clubs with potentially ten times the resources.

Despite Bluco’s arrival, Strasbourg’s emoluments did not really take off. At Lorient, Bill Foley made it possible to recruit Benjamin Mendy or Tiemoue Bakayoko as a minority shareholder. But the Merlus budget (€80 million) is not yet a natural candidate for Europe.

Most ordinary people will no longer get money from CVC

And for those not backed by a wealthy foreign owner, the future doesn’t look bright. The first reason is that the clubs will start to see the face of the agreement reached with the investment fund CVC Capital Partners in 2022, which will receive 13% of the LFP income for life, in exchange for 1.5 billion euros. And this is for many reasons.

The most modest have already received the €33 million promised between the summers of 2022 and 2023. This summer, only PSG, OM, OL, Monaco, Rennes, Nice and Lille have yet to claim their third share of the jackpot. Then, because CVC has promised no income before the summer of 2024, it will not have to give up its share and, from July, it will have to make up for the previous season. A catch-up of €106.8 million is estimated by the league, which will apparently be added to the first cut of 13%.

The cuts will reduce the club’s income, unless TV rights take a big leap. But, for the moment, the amount of future rights is written with a big question mark.