What are Lionel Messi’s Net Worth and Salary and Who are His Wife and Kids?

What is Lionel Messi’s net worth?

A personality that has made millions of hard-core fans worldwide, Lionel Messi is one person that absolutely needs no introduction. Being a star of the football field as he is, Messi has become one of the greatest footballers of this era.

Early Life

He was born Lionel Andres Messi Cuccittini on 24^th June 1987 to Jorge Messi, a steel factory worker, and Celia Cuccittini a magnet manufacturing workshop attendant. Messi was the third child of the middle-class couple who had three other children. He is primarily of Italian and Spanish descent.

He developed a strong love for football while he was still very little and was always out playing with his brothers and cousins who later became professionals in the game too. At the age of four, Messi joined a local club and was coached by his father. However, it was recorded that his greatest influence was his grandmother who accompanied him to every game and training session until she died when he was 11.

At the age of 6, he joined the Rosario club. He played very well and scored a good number of goals until he was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency at the age of 10. After a lot of back and forths concerning payment for the treatment, Barcelona finally signed him at the age of 13.

Professional Football Career

Since then, it has been a long journey for Messi who now serves as a forward to the Spanish club, FC Barcelona, and leads the Argentinian national football team as a captain.

One of the finest footballers in the world, Messi has been a part of FC Barcelona for a long time now, starting from his childhood. He played in FC Barcelona as a junior from 2000 to 2003 before playing in the league in 2004 as a seventeen-year-old. Messi was the youngest player to play in La Liga when he debuted for the club, but this record was broken by Bojan Krkic in 2007.

With a head start to his successful professional career, Messi went on to mesmerize his audiences with his talents in many international games. He is one of the highest goal scorers as he has already scored 286 goals in international games since 2004. Lionel Messi recently broke his club’s appearance record on Sunday, the 21st March 2021 when he was featured in his 768th game for the Catalan giants, the previous record holder was the legendary Xavi Hernandez, who appeared 767 times for the club.

???? A L O N E A T T H E T O P ????
???? An otherworldly player
☄️ A stratospheric number
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— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) March 21, 2021

Analysis of Lionel Messi’s Net Worth

Widely recognized for his aggressive plays, Messi has been enjoying his stardom with the accumulation of several awards that complement his brilliance in performance. Almost all through his career, Messi has been named among the highest-paid footballers and highest-earning athletes in the world.

Winning numerous titles for FC Barcelona and taking the Argentinian national team to the finals of various tournaments, Messi is unquestionably one of the finest footballers the world has ever seen. He has his exploits on the football pitch to thank for his massive fortune but as you would soon learn, his on-field pay isn’t the only source of his net worth.

The Footballer Has Made Over $1 Billion In Career Earnings

Lionel Messi has a long list of accomplishments that includes winning the Ballon d’Or/FIFA Ballon d’Or a record six times and consecutively from 2009 to 2012. He is an extraordinary footballer that has dominated the sport for years. Because of his unrelenting reign as a star player, his club Barcelona has been very unwilling to let him go. From Newell’s Old Boys, an Argentine sports club where the player began his career, he joined the Spanish football club in 2000 and has been there ever since.

Over the years he has spent with the Spanish giant, he has made multiple pacts with his contract often been reviewed to hand him better pay. He signed his first professional contract with Barca in February 2004 and by June 2005 when he had become a regular with the club’s first team, he was handed a deal that would keep him with the side until 2010. The new contract increased his release clause to €150 million; this was a hint at what the future hold for Messi in the sports but many failed to notice this as he was still in the early days of his senior career. By March 2007, the contract was reviewed and Messi began earning as much as €100,000 every week.

By July 2008, the soccer world had started noticing that Messi wasn’t an ordinary footballer, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that he became Barca’s highest-paid player. In September 2009, he renewed his contract with the team for seven years. The deal would see him play for the team until 2016 and it came with a buyout clause of €250 million. The next major deal he would make with Barcelona came in 2017 when he committed to the Spanish giant for another four years.

His Current Contract With Barcelona Is Worth €555.2 Million ($673.8 Million)

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The contract he signed with Barcelona in 2017 would expire in 2021. Details of the contract were not disclosed to the public until a leaked copy of the deal was published by “El Mundo”, a Spanish newspaper in January 2021. El Mundo published details of the pact as a follow-up story on reports about Barcelona struggling to manage its debts that amounted to €1.17 billion ($1.42 billion).

While it was widely held that the contract was published to propagate the sentiment that Messi has become a liability to the Spanish club, it gave an insight into the Argentine forward’s on-field pay. If we must believe everything the Spanish newspaper reported, the worth of the four-year contract is €555.2 million ($673.8m). This means that Lionel Messi has been pocketing €138.8 million ($168.5 million) per year.

When he signed the contract in 2017, it was reported that Barcelona took his release clause to €700 million ($823 million).

Will Messi Renew His Contract With Barcelona? 

The 2017 contract he signed with the club will expire on the 30th of June 2021. With that, the Argentine forward will be able to join any other club of his choice without worrying about the €700 million release clause Barca placed on him.

It is not a secret that the world’s best player has been unhappy with the club in recent times. He had made it clear that he wanted to leave the club after his team suffered an 8 – 2 trashing from FC Bayern Munich at the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League quarter-final. But Barcelona would let a player of his caliber go without a fuss.

When Lionel Messi tabled a transfer request, he was asked to pay the €700 million clause on his contract. The footballer was hugely disappointed by this because, according to him, he had been promised by Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former president of the club that he can leave on a free transfer after the 2019/2020 season.

Football clubs like Premier League’s Manchester City and Ligue 1’s Paris Saint-Germain are said to have indicated their interest in having Messi but it remains to be seen what the future holds for him. The new management of Barcelona has promised that it will convince the superstar to remain with Barca, so only time can tell if Messi would renew his contract with the Spanish giant or part ways with the club.

Messi Is The Athlete With The Largest Contract Ever Signed

Over the course of his career, Lionel Messi has always been listed among the highest-earning athletes in the world and has even topped the list several times. In 2020, Forbes ranked him as the third, highest-paid athlete in the world and the second most paid in football. Later that year, the American business magazine reported that his $126 million combined earnings left him the highest-paid player in soccer.

The Argentine player has had to contend for the top spot in the list of highest-paid athletes each year with Cristiano Ronaldo and athletes in other sports. Nonetheless, it is widely believed that he is the athlete with the largest contract ever signed. Next to him is NFL’s Patrick Mahomes who inked a 12-year contract worth $503,000,000 in 2020. There is a huge gap between the two contracts as Messi’s worth $673.8 million is only for four years.

The Argentine Forward Makes Over $30 Million Yearly From Endorsement Deals

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Being one of the most famous athletes in the world, it is only natural that Lionel Messi has become very influential. In 2011 and 2012, Time’s named him among the 100 most influential people in the world. Messi has millions of fans scattered across the globe, with over 191 million and 102 million followers respectively on Instagram and Facebook as of March 2021.

With such a huge number of dedicated fans, it would have been a surprising abnormality if Messi hadn’t established himself as a leading brand endorser. Notable among his endorsement partners is Adidas, he has a lifelong deal with the German multinational corporation. Below is a list of brands he has partnered with:

• Pepsi
• Lay’s
• Budweiser
• Gatorade
• OrCam
• Mengniu
• EA Sports
• Jacob & Co.
• Ooredoo
• Tata Motors
• Huawei
• Audemars Piguet
• Gillette
• Mastercard
• Hawkers Kanomi
• Sirin Labs
• Mengniu Group
• Turkish Airlines
• Nike
• Dolce & Gabbana

The Consequences of Tax Evasion

Like a good number of other footballers, Lionel Messi has had to face some challenges and controversies that have threatened his career. Prominent among them is that tax fraud charges that had the Spanish authorities drag him to court, alongside his father. It was said that the Barcelona forward and his father Jorge, defrauded Spain of €4.1m between 2007 and 2009. They allegedly used tax havens in Belize and Uruguay to hid earnings from image rights.

Investigations into his financial affairs began in 2013 and Messi soon had to face the court for tax evasion. The footballer argued that his father is the person in charge of his earnings, that he just sign whatever contract the man and his lawyers present to him because he trusted his dad and they had agreed that he would be in charge of things of that sort.

Messi’s father corroborated his son’s statement as their defense argued that the older man had not spent much time in Barcelona. But it wasn’t enough to have the case dismissed as the Spanish courts found Messi and his father guilty of defrauding Spain and handed them suspended jail terms. For the footballer, it was a suspended 21 months prison sentence, and his father, 15 months. In addition to the suspended sentences, Messi and his father were respectively fined €2 million and €1.5 million.

They were found guilty in July 2016 even though they made a voluntary €5 million corrective payment that covered the alleged unpaid tax and the interest it had accumulated in August 2013. This was probably why Messi appealed against the sentences but it was reportedly rejected by the country’s Supreme Court.

The Various Ways Lionel Messi Spends His Money

As one of the highest-earning sportsmen in the world, Lionel Messi’s net worths afford him the audacity to lead a lavish lifestyle. The football player is to a large extent, a prudent money manager but he is known to indulge in some lavish spendings when it comes to providing comfort for his immediate family. Below are the various ways he has spent his wealth over the years:

He Owns Two Houses In Barcelona

For a footballer of his caliber, one expects nothing less than perfection for a home. The football star lives a fabulous life in his multi-million dollar houses in Spain and Argentina. The FC Barcelona forward has wealth written all over his mansion located in Castelldefels, a prestigious suburb of Barcelona. It is a three-story building with state-of-the-art interior and exterior designs.

Messi’s house in Castelldefels is indeed nothing compared to his football-shaped house also in Barcelona. The luxurious house nicknamed One-Zero Eco House, which cost about 7 million euros, is said to be where the footballer and his family live.

Vacations With Immediate Family and Financial Support for Extended Family Members

In addition to providing financial support to extended members of his family, the Barcelona star seizes every opportunity he gets to go on vacation with his family. Sometime in 2016, it was reported that he was enjoying a vacation on a luxury yacht with his family in Ibiza.

The 28 meters 10-berth yacht was said to come with a paddleboard, jet ski, and two kayaks; in addition to a personal chef and three crew members. Messi spent €7,800 each day his family enjoyed the luxury.

He Rents a Private Jet and Owns Multiple Luxury Cars

Lionel Messi has purchased a private jet reportedly worth $15m. The footsteps contain the names of those he holds dear to his heart.

Big surprise as Xavi and Iniesta’s names are missing. ????????‍♂ pic.twitter.com/tmqB1tXp0f

— Okon ‘Ediye’ Nya (@iamOkon) December 11, 2018

Acquiring a private jet worth $15 million would have been the most lavish thing the footballer has spent his money on, but even that has a justification. From what we gathered, the footballer did not buy the 2004 Gulfstream V jet but is only renting it so that it would be easier and comfortable for him and his family to travel whenever they wanted to. The aircraft customized with Messi’s name and that of his wife and kids, features two bathrooms, a kitchen, and 16 seats that can be converted into eight beds.

Like a good number of other footballers, the Argentine is also a big fan of fancy cars and he has spent a good measure of his wealth on them. He was once rumored to have bought a 1957 Ferrari 335 Sport Spider Scaglietti for €32 million ($37 million). As claimed, he outbid Cristiano Ronaldo for the Ferrari that Sterling Moss drove at the Cuban Grand Prix in 1958. While it is yet to be confirmed if the football player truly spent $32 million for a car, it’s no secret he owns several luxury cars. Below is a list of the rides you will find in his garage:

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The Soccer Star Has Donated Millions to Charity

As much as Lionel Messi goes all out in spending his money for the comfort of his loved ones, he has been very charitable and public-spirited. Throughout his career, the Barcelona player has donated millions to promote the welfare of humanity. He is particularly known for his support for charitable efforts targeted at vulnerable children, this is probably because of the health challenges he faced as a child. Right from when he began his senior career with Barcelona, Messi has been involved with the activities of UNICEF, a United Nations agency known for providing humanitarian aid to children across the globe.

During the Corona Virus pandemic, he donated €1 million in support of efforts made to fight the spread of the virus. Earlier in 2016, he donated €65,000 to Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian medical organization. He was awarded the amount after he won a libel case against a daily newspaper based in Madrid, La Razon newspaper. The soccer star is known to have committed his wealth towards promoting youth football in his country. He provides financial support to various football clubs in Argentina, especially Sarmiento which is located in his hometown, Rosario.

Through his charity organization, The Leo Messi Foundation, the Barcelona forward partners with other institutions to develop projects that would have a positive impact on children and adolescents at risk across the globe. He hopes to help as many children as possible realize their dreams. It was once reported that the foundation, in partnership with UNICEF, distributed 50,630 educational kits for children in Syria. Not long past, the foundation held a third edition of the Pro-Am Golf Tournament to raise funds for the SJD Pediatric Cancer Center Barcelona.

Meet Lionel Messi’s Wife Antonella Roccuzzo

• Date of Birth: February 26, 1988
• Age:  36 Years Old
• Occupation: Model
• Duration of Marriage: 2017 – Present

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Messi is one of the footballers that have the most interesting romantic stories. Since the age of 20, Lionel has been in a relationship with Antonella Roccuzzo whom he knew since he was 5 years. This unique kind of love often leaves fans gushing over the cute pair, with many wondering exactly how their relationship began. Thankfully, the football star has been very open about his love life. He has revealed that he met Antonella through a childhood friend named Lucas Scaglia; Lucas happens to be Antonella’s cousin. After the footballer met Antonella for the first time, he started spending more time with Lucas but his prime motive was to be around Antonella.

Messi has always been a sweet soul, so it was only a matter of time before Antonella became fond of him as well. But as fate would have it, the two were separated as Messi had to move to Barcelona to intensify his pursuit of a football career. While they were separated, Messi kept in touch with Antonella as he wrote her several letters. At some point, Antonella became romantically involved with another man: the relationship came to an end when Messi unexpectedly visited Antonella after she lost a friend in an accident.

The love-struck couple began dating and eventually tied the knot in June 2017 after 8 years of dating. Raised alongside two sisters named Carla and Paula, Antonella Roccuzzo wanted to become a dentist but fate had other plans for her. She embraced modeling after she moved to Barcelona to live with Messi.

Messi and Antonella Are Now Parents to Three Sons

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The couple began building a home together even before they got married. Their wedding came after the arrival of their first two sons, Thiago (2012) and Mateo (2015).

Thiago Messi Roccuzzo

• Date of Birth: November 2, 2012
• Age: 11 Years Old
• Occupation: Undetermined

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Thiago is the first son of the couple and like his father, he is passionate about football. It remains to be seen if he would become a professional like his father but he is working towards that as he has joined Barca academy.

Lionel once affirmed that Thiago is very passionate about the game. According to the Barcelona player, his son admires players like his long-time rival Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Kylian Mbappe, Luis Suarez, Antoine Griezmann, and Arturo Vidal.

Mateo Messi Roccuzzo

• Date of Birth: September 11, 2015
• Age: 8 Years Old
• Occupation: Undetermined

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Mateo is the second child of the famous footballer. When he was born, the Barcelona star had his birth dated and name inscribed on his new Adidas boots. Mateo is still a kid and doesn’t concern himself about the future. But his father has made it clear that he wouldn’t force any of his children to play football.

Ciro Messi Roccuzzo

• Date of Birth: March 10, 2018
• Age: 6 Years Old
• Occupation: Undetermined

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Ciro is the baby of the family. He has a lot of growing up to do and it’s too early to determine what he would do with his life. Nonetheless, there are no doubts he can count on the support of his parents whatever career path he chooses.

His Height and Weight

His awesome skills on the pitch are of course a result of long hours of excessive training, as well as self-discipline. But Messi also has his strong stamina to thank for his unique abilities. The Argentine weighs 72 kg and stands at 1.70 m which is just right for his shape.

Quick Facts About The Soccer Star