Rs 90 lakh! That is what a Manchester City player gets a week



English football club Manchester City has emerged as the sports team which pays the highest to its players in the world, leapfrogging Spanish footballing giants Barcelona and Real Madrid.

According to a report published in dailymail.co.uk, the English Premier League team Manchester City has been reported to have an average weekly wage for a member of the first-team squad reaching nearly a staggering $158,000, which  is over $11,000 more than that of second-placed baseball side LA Dodgers' average.

Indeed since billionaire Sheikh Mansour’s takeover of the club in 2008, it has become a global force on and off the football pitch, with the average wage of a first-team player rising to a whopping $8,059,477 a year.

City's Yaya Toure is believed to be one of the highest paid players in the Premier League and its other stars like Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez are also held to be paid quite handsomely.

A survey conducted by Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) for 2013, compiled in association with ESPN The Magazine , City’s bitter Manchester rivals United were placed 12th on the list of teams with highest expenditure on player wages, with a $6,032,572 average annual pay per year ($116,011 per week). Another English Premier League club Chelsea dropped from fourth in last year's survey to eighth, with an average annual pay of $6,242,919 or $120,056 per week.

Spanish League sides Real Madrid and Barcelona follow one another on the list at the third and fourth places respectively, both with an average annual pay of around $7,257,216 ($139,562 per week). These two world-famous Spanish clubs had occupied the top two slots in last year's survey, but have slid in the list of highest-spending sports teams, apparently owing to the weak euro.

AC Milan at sixth and Inter Milan at tenth are are the Italian football teams in the top ten with Champions League winners Bayern Munich at ninth representing the German Bundesliga.

There are three baseball teams in the top twelve and one basketball team. MLB teams the Dodgers are placed second, the New York Yankees fifth and the Philadelphia Phillies eleventh.

The presence of both the Yankees and City on the list shows the combined financial clout of the two franchises, just weeks after the two brands launched joint venture New York City, a new Major League Soccer side based in the Big Apple.

The sole representative of the NBA in the top 12 are basketball team the LA Lakers, who are placed seventh on the list. The average of the Lakers is propped up by superstars such as Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol. 

Figures used in the survey are from the 2012-13 seasons, in the various leagues of the world, across sports.