Kylian Mbappe is the latest high-profile player to be linked with a move to the Saudi Pro League with Al Hilal reportedly offering the French superstar a world-record fee to join the club for just one year.
Mbappe looks set to leave Paris Saint-Germain this transfer window after the 24-year-old reportedly made his intentions clear to leave at the end of next season when his contract expires
The Frenchman has been subsequently left out of the team’s pre-season trip to Asia with the Ligue 1 club putting Mbappe up for sale as they look to recoup a transfer fee for the forward rather than face the possibility of losing him on a free next summer, with Real Madrid the likely destination.
A host of clubs in the Premier League were reported to have shown interest but the first concrete offer, as reported by Fabrizio Romano, has now come from Saudi club Al Hilal who are said to have offered an eye-watering €300m transfer fee to PSG alongside a yearly salary package of €700m to Mbappe.
The deal is said to only last a year with Mbappe then free to depart and potentially link up with his preferred club, Real Madrid, for the start of the 2024-25 season.
Here is a deeper look behind the proposed world-record transfer.
How much will Mbappe earn per second?
Starting with the annual wage of €700m – a figure that would make Mbappe the highest-earning footballer in the world by a comfortable distance. When broken down fully here is how much he would earn:
€700m per year
€58.33m per month
€1.9m a day
€79,900 an hour
€1,332 a minute
€22 per second
€119,880 for 90 minutes of football? Not bad.
What about other Saudi Pro League players?
It is no secret that Saudia Arabia has been keen to attract some of the biggest names in the game with vast sums of money. Should Mbappe leave he would join the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Roberto Firmino and N’Golo Kante who have already accepted deals to play in the Saudi Pro League.
Mbappe’s proposed salary, however, would dwarf the earnings of all those aforementioned deals.
Ronaldo, Al Nassr and Saudi Arabia’s first marquee signing, is reported to be earning roughly $200m per year while his former Real Madrid team-mate, Benzema, is earning around $100m a year – the same figure that two-time Premier League winner, N’Golo Kante is said to be earning after his move to Al-Ittihad.
As well as being over three times the sum that Ronaldo receives, Mbappe’s deal of €700m per year would also far exceed the $60m yearly figure that Lionel Messi will receive in the MLS having completed his move to Inter Miami.
What about the transfer fee?
PSG’s reasoning for offering Mbappe out to clubs was to ensure that they could get a transfer fee for their prized asset. Alongside the astronomical salary package that Al Hilal are offering to the Frenchman, the Saudi club will also fork out around $300m in transfer fees to the Parisian club. Such a figure would smash the previous transfer record which was ironically set by PSG when they spent $222m in a deal to sign Neymar from Barcelona.
It would also not only mean that PSG make a $120m profit on the 24-year-old, having paid Monaco $180m to sign him in 2017, but also ensure that the French club are now involved in the three biggest transfer deals in footballing history.
Chelsea (Enzo Fernandez and Romelu Lukaku) and Barcelona (Phillipe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann) are the only other clubs to feature more than once in the top-ten most expensive transfers of all time.
How does it compare with other sports?
Lebron James was one of the first sports stars to react to the news of Mbappe’s deal, joking that he too would be keen to take a one-year-deal for a similar amount of money. It’s no surprise, perhaps, given that the all-time NBA points scorer has earned $531m in lifetime NBA earnings, a figure that would be far exceeded by Mbappe’s $776 million yearly salary.
Tom Brady and Tiger Woods, two other legendary American athletes would also have their career earnings more than doubled, if not quadrupled by the reported Mbappe figure. The 45-year-old quarterback earned $332M throughout his 23-season career while the 15-time major champion has earnt $157m in career PGA Tour earnings so far.
