The truth about Antoine Griezmann's Barcelona salary

Antoine Griezmann’s signing for 135 million euros (120m euro fee, 15m fine for Atletico’s complaint), was one of the three great market failures of Josep Maria Bartomeu.

The other two were Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembele. Over 400m euros badly invested to try and replace Neymar. Griezmann, luckily, is no longer at Barca. Laporta, Alemany and Planes have managed, in extra-time of the transfer window, to seal a return for him to Atletico with a 40m euro obligatory buy clause. A good deal in sporting and economic terms. It will allow youth players with more talent and determination to play. And he had one of the highest salaries at the club.

Various numbers had been spoken of in terms of Griezmann’s wages. Today in SPORT we’ve been able to reveal the truth. He earned between 17-21 million euros a year, fixed. Plus a lot more possible bonuses. A five million euro signing on fee he picked up on August 15, 2019, for example.

In total he could have earned 177 million euros over five years, if Barca had won it all and he had been Ballon d’Or. That wasn’t the case. He took 46.5 million for two seasons in the end. Big numbers but far from the huge claims there had been about the size of it.