Leonardo Bonucci has joined Gonzalo Higuain as Serie A’s highest-paid player, according to figures published by La Gazzetta dello Sport on Thursday.
Bonucci moved to AC Milan from Juventus in the summer window, which saw him move on a par with his former teammate, earning €7.5 million a year — more than anybody else in in Italian football.
His salary is €500,000 a year more than Paulo Dybala, who had became the league’s second highest-paid player when he signed a new contract in April, while Milan’s 18-year-old goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma penned a lucrative first professional contract with the Rossoneri — worth €6m per annum — in the summer.
Juventus remain the club who pay the most overall with a wage bill of €164m, ahead of Milan’s €117m and Roma’s €91m.
Juve coach Massimiliano Allegri is the best-paid coach, earning €7m, which is £3m more than Inter’s Luciano Spalletti, with AC Milan boss Vincenzo Montella third on €3m and Roma coach Eusebio Di Francesco on €1.5m, the same amount earned by Torino coach Sinisa Mihajlovic.
Counting both the players’ and the coaches’ salaries, €1.01 billion will be spent by Serie A clubs this season, although that is still below the €1.1bn of 2011-12, which remains a record year for Italian football.
Salaries of the top players, which include Mauro Icardi at Inter (€4.5m), Napoli’s Lorenzo Insigne (€3.6m) and Edin Dzeko at Roma (€4.5m), are still low compared to the amounts being paid by many other of Europe’s top clubs, such as Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Bayern Munich.
They all pay at least double the highest Serie A salary for star players such as Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Pogba and Robert Lewandowski, with the Premier League paying three times as much as Serie A on salaries.
Ben Gladwell reports on Serie A, the Italian national team and the Bundesliga for ESPN FC, UEFA and the Press Association. @UEFAcomBenG.