De Rossi top as Serie A wages soar

By Football Italia staff

Daniele De Rossi is the player with the biggest wages in Serie A, as overall club spending increased by €33m this summer.

The money is flowing back into the Italian League after three years of self-imposed austerity measures.

La Gazzetta dello Sport studied the books and found that spending on wage bills has grown by €33m this season to a total of €882m.

It would be considerably higher, but Serie A sides worked out smart deals with the Premier League clubs to get players like Juan Cuadrado, Mario Balotelli and Stevan Jovetic on loan with part of their wages paid for.

The peak was in 2011, when the total wage bill in Serie A reached a record €1.1bn.

Some of the changes have been purely administrative, spreading payment out via bonuses or image rights so it doesn’t count purely as a salary.

Juventus have the largest overall wage bill in Serie A, paying out €124m collectively, with Paul Pogba their highest earner on €4.5m.

Roma follow on €113m, then Milan €101m and Inter €94m (thanks in part to releasing big earners like Hernanes, Xherdan Shaqiri and Mateo Kovacic).

Of the big clubs, only Fiorentina have significantly reduced their wage bill this summer from €56m to €46m, while Lazio went from €55m to €52m.

As for individual players, Roma midfielder De Rossi retains his spot as the highest-paid Serie A player, pocketing an impressive €6.5m per season for the third year running.

That dwarfs the sum earned by his captain Francesco Totti (€2.5m), but Ashley Cole was left out of the squad and he’s still on €2.3m per season.

Gonzalo Higuain of Napoli follows on €5.5m, then Juve star Pogba on €4.5m.

It seems like a lot, until you take into account reports Pogba turned down a Chelsea proposal of €12m per year.

Curiously, Milan pay both striker Carlos Bacca and seldom-used midfielder Riccardo Montolivo the same amount: €3.5m per season.

Napoli’s second highest earner is Juan Camilo Zuniga, on the transfer list and frozen out of the squad, on €3m.

Inter have a lot of big wage bills for players who don’t spend much time on the field, such as Nemanja Vidic their joint second highest earner on €3.2m per season with a contract until June 2017.

Serie A Wage Bill and Top Earner

Atalanta: €25m (German Denis, €1m)

Bologna: €27m (Mattia Destro, €1.6m)

Carpi: €13m (Marco Borriello, €0.55m)

Chievo: €16m (Alberto Paloschi, €0.7m)

Empoli: €14m (Riccardo Saponara, €0.8m)

Fiorentina: €46m (Giuseppe Rossi, €2.4m)

Frosinone: €8m (Samuele Longo, €0.3m)

Genoa: €26m (Mattia Perin, €1.1m)

Inter: €94m (Geoffrey Kondogbia, €3.5m)

Juventus: €124m (Paul Pogba, €4.5m)

Lazio: €52m (Miroslav Klose, €2m)

Milan: €101m (Carlos Bacca, €3.5m)

Napoli: €74m (Gonzalo Higuain €5.5m)

Palermo: €24m (Stefano Sorrentino, €1m)

Roma: €113m (Daniele De Rossi, €6.5m)

Sampdoria: €28m (Eder, €0.9m)

Sassuolo: €27m (Domenico Berardi, €1.1m)

Torino: €24m (Fabio Quagliarella, €0.85m)

Udinese: €25m (Antonio Di Natale, €0.8m)

Verona: €21m (Luca Toni, €1.15m)

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