Spoiler

And the highest paid footballer in the world is…

… not an LA galaxy player

Sports Illustrated magazine have compiled their annual sports rich list, which Tiger Woods dominates for the second year running. He banked nearly $112million last year, which is over $12,700 an hour. That’s a lot of tees.

They also publish a list of the top 20 non-American earners, the results of which are quite surprising: Beckham is fifth and only one Premier League player makes the top ten:

1. Fernando Alonso. Auto Racing. $35m.
2. Ronaldinho. Barcelona. $32.7m.
3. Roger Federer. Tennis. $31.3m.
4. Valentino Rossi. Motor Sports. $30m.
5. David Beckham. Real Madrid/LA Galaxy. $29.7m.
6. Yao Ming. Basketball. $27.5m.
7. Ichiro Suzuki. Baseball. $24m.
8. Maria Sharapova. Tennis. $23.8m.
9. Thierry Henry. Arsenal/Barcelona. $21.4m.
10. Michael Ballack. Chelsea. $20.9m.
11. Ronaldo. Milan. $19m.
12. Hideki Matsui. Baseball. $19m.
13. Dirk Nowitski. Basketball. $18.1m.
14. Ralf Schumacher. Auto Racing. $18m.
15. Andriy Shevchenko. Chelsea . $17.3m.
16. Alfonso Soriano. Baseball. $17.3m.
17. Vijay Singh. Golf. $16.4m.
18. Alessandro Del Piero. Juventus. $15.7m.
19. John Terry. Chelsea. $15.5m.
20. Steven Gerrard. Liverpool. $15.4m.

Who would’ve thought Fernando Alonso would be the highest earning non-American sportsman of last year. McLaren paid him all that cash to get his third consecutive Driver’s Championship, but he didn’t. Instead, he came third, bickered with his teammate and stropped off back to Renault. Bets value for money ever? Yes, best value for money ever.

[International list here and domestic list here. Found via The Offside]

• Rich List
• Sports Illustrated
• Wages