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Some ply their trade in front of crowds in excess of 60,000 people while others perform for attendances of one-twentieth of that size.
So it is little wonder that there are gulfs between the money the stars of the Premier League can earn and the wages paid to League Two players.
What is the average wage of a Premier League footballer?
The Professional Footballers Association (PFA) has reported that the average wage of a player in the top flight is just over £60,000 a week.
Of course, the figures differ wildly between those true stars of the English game and youngsters taking their first steps towards what they hope will be soccer stardom.
Manchester City midfield maestro Kevin de Bruyne is reported to be the country’s highest-paid player, with a weekly wage of £400,000, resulting in an annual salary of £20.8m.
His City teammate Erling Haaland is not far behind on £19.5m per annum, a big part of the reason why Man City top the highest wage bill list in the Premier League in 2024.
They pay more than £201m to their players each season, ahead of their arch-rivals Manchester United, who pay their players a total of £185m a year.
Arsenal and Chelsea are the third- and fourth-highest paying clubs, each dishing out more than £171m to their players.
What is the average wage of a Championship footballer?
Footballers’ wages tend to take a sharp dive if they ply their trade in the Championship and the average salary for a player in the second tier drops down to about £10,000 a week.
There are still those who are paid substantially even if they are no longer playing at the highest level, with the top two earners in the Championship picking up £70,000 per week (Mason Holgate for West Bromwich and Patrick Bamford for Leeds).
Leeds United – who are a shot of winning the Championship this year – top the charts for the highest wage bill overall, paying an estimated £40m per year to their players.
What is the average wage of a League One footballer?
The drop to League One wages is not as huge as between the Premier League and the Championship, but it is still noticeably less, with the average wage said to be £7,045 a week.
There are some big clubs in the division and Sheffield Wednesday midfielder Barry Bannan is League One’s highest-paid performer at £21,000 a week.
Plymouth pair Sam Crosgrove and Bali Mumba, who are on loan at Home Park from Birmingham and Norwich, respectively, come next on the list with weekly wages of £18,000.
What is the average wage of a League Two footballer?
Reports differ as to what the average wage is for a player in League Two but it is thought to be about £2,000 a week.
Colchester’s Matty Longstaff is the highest-paid player in the division at £24,000 per week, but he is on loan at the Essex club from Premier League high-flyers Newcastle, who are likely to be paying a significant proportion of the midfielder’s wages.
Crawley goalkeeper Ellery Balcombe, who is on loan from Brentford, is reported to be the next in the Football League basement top-paid list on £8,300 a week.
