Ready to feel jealous fifty times over?

Fans of great lists: get your reading slippers on. A terrifyingly solemn Portuguese website called futebolfinance.com has compiled a list of the fifty highest earning European footballers. It being Portugal, the sums are in euros (and it being Portugal no one playing for a Portuguese club side is on the list), but with one euro worth about 76p, by subtracting a quarter of the sum, the all-important pound value will be revealed.

Once you’ve managed to control the powerful waves of envy and indignation crashing together inside your head, the list makes for some interesting reading. Who’d have thought Darren Bent was top twenty? How much higher would he have been if he’d gone to West Ham instead? And since when was a Harry Kewell worth more than a Joe Cole?

1. Ricardo Kaka €9.000.000

2. Ronaldinho Gaucho €8.520.000

3. Frank Lampard €8.160.000

4. John Terry €8.160.000

5. Fernando Torres €7.920.000

6. Andriy Shevchenko €7.800.000

7. Michael Ballack €7.800.000

8. Cristiano Ronaldo €7.680.000

9. Thierry Henry €7.680.000

10. Steven Gerrard €7.680.000

more after the jump…