Football’s wealth league puts Chelsea far behind Manchester United and Arsenal

Forbes business magazine has placed Manchester United at the top of the wealthy clubs pile (740m), with Arsenal (466m) in 3rd spot and Chelsea (274m) way back in 8th place.

This is current for the season ending 2005-2006.

25 most valuable clubs (Europe)

1 Man Utd £740m
2 Real Madrid £528m
3 Arsenal £466m
4 Bayern Munich £427m
5 AC Milan £420m
6 Juventus £289m
7 Inter Milan £282m
8 Chelsea £274m
9 Barcelona £273m
10 Schalke 04 £240m
11 Liverpool £231m
12 Lyon £175m
13 Newcastle £132m
14 Tottenham £124m
15 Roma £114m
16 Hamburg £112m
17 Man City £106m
18 B Dortmund £101m
19 Ajax £100m
20 Celtic £94m
21 Everton £84m
22 Marseille £80m
23 West Ham £79m
24 Rangers £75m
25 Aston Villa £71m

Highest-Paid Players (Europe)

Note that Beckham’s move to MLS side LA Galaxy has not been taken into account.

1 Ronaldinho (Barcelona) £15.2m
2 David Beckham (Real Madrid) £14.8m
3 Ronaldo (AC Milan) £11.7m
4 Wayne Rooney (Man Utd) £8.7m
5 Michael Ballack (Chelsea) £8.7m
6 Thierry Henry (Arsenal) £8.2m
7 Zinedine Zidane (ex-Real Madrid) £8.2m
8 Fabio Cannavaro (Real Madrid) £7.6m
9 John Terry (Chelsea) £7.1m
10 Steven Gerrard (Liverpool) £7.1m

(Source: Forbes.com – thanks to Ed Harrison for the link)

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