How much David Beckham pays Lionel Messi at Inter Miami - it is 4 times Salford City's wage bill | OneFootball

We compared Lionel Messi's wages at David Beckham's Inter Miami to Salford City's annual wage bill.

A new era is underway at Salford City after Gary Neville and David Beckham completed their takeover of the club.

Neville first became involved with Salford in 2014 when he bought the club with his former Manchester United team-mates Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Phil Neville and Paul Scholes and Valencia owner Peter Lim, with Beckham coming on board in 2019 when he purchased a 10% stake.

However, Neville and Beckham took full control of the Ammies last month as part of a new consortium that includes former banker Lord Mervyn Davies and businessman Declan Kelly, although the previous Class of 92 co-owners will still have a role to play at the club.

The change comes as Salford begin preparations for their seventh consecutive season in League Two, and Karl Robinson's side missed out on the play-off places in agonising fashion on the final day of last season as they were held to a 2-2 draw by already-relegated Carlisle United.

Beckham's increased involvement at the Peninsula Stadium means he will now have a controlling stake in two football clubs as he is already the co-owner of Inter Miami, and he has had plenty of success with the MLS side, including convincing Lionel Messi to join his project.

David Beckham will be hoping to replicate Inter Miami success with Salford City

After years of planning, it was announced in January 2018 that the Miami Beckham United group had been awarded the 25th MLS franchise and would be introduced to the league from the start of the 2020 season.

Inter Miami signed plenty of high-profile players in their first few years of existence, but their global profile reached new heights in the summer of 2023 when it was announced that Messi would be joining the club after leaving French giants Paris Saint-Germain.

After accumulating the most points in the combined Eastern and Western Conference table, Inter Miami won their first Supporters' Shield trophy in the 2024 season, but they missed out on the MLS Cup as they were knocked out in round one of the play-offs by Atlanta United in what was widely regarded as one of the biggest shocks in the competition's history.

Inter Miami currently sit sixth in the Eastern Conference table after a decent start to life under new head coach Javier Mascherano, and they have a number of games in hand on those above them due to their ongoing participation in the Club World Cup.

As for Messi, his arrival has certainly helped to boost Inter Miami's standing on the global stage, and Forbes estimates the club's current valuation to be $1.2 billion, with that figure rising significantly due to the presence of the Argentine superstar.

Of course, Beckham will not be able to attract anyone of Messi's calibre to Salford, but he has proven during his time in the United States that he is capable of building and developing a football club, and he will be hoping to do the same at the Peninsula Stadium.

As Beckham continues to settle in to his new role with the Ammies, we looked at how much he is paying Messi at Inter Miami and how that compares to the wage bill of the League Two outfit.

According to The Guardian, Messi has a $12 million (£8.9 million) base salary at Inter Miami, and the 38-year-old receives $20.4 million (£15.1 million) in total compensation from the MLS outfit.

Those figures take into account the money Messi receives from his MLS deal, including any marketing bonus and agent fees, but he also gets a share of the league's contract with Apple TV, which is believed to earn him as much as $50 million (£36.9 million).

Using Messi's total compensation figure of £15.1 million, the former Barcelona star earns almost four times more in a year than the entire Salford squad, with Capology claiming that the Ammies had an annual wage bill of £4,495,400 last season, although it should be stressed that it is an estimate.

Given that Messi's wages alone are more than the entire payroll of 22 MLS teams, it should not be too much of a surprise that his salary dwarfs the wage bill of a League Two side, but it does highlight the eye-watering sums that Beckham has had to fork out to convince the 2022 World Cup winner to ply his trade in Miami.

After bringing in the likes of Tom Edwards, Ben Woodburn, Hakeeb Adelakun and Cole Stockton last summer, Salford were estimated to have the second-highest annual wage bill in the fourth tier last season, with only relegated Carlisle (£5,081,000) spending more on their squad, but the Cumbrians certainly saw less of a return on their investment.