About Retained List

Retained List is a football contract and wage tracking database covering the Premier League, EFL Championship, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Saudi Pro League. We publish weekly wage, contract expiry, age, position, nationality and club data for every senior player we cover.

Verified August 2026

By , Contracts & Wages Editor·

Who Maintains Retained List

Retained List is edited by Daniel Mercer, our Contracts & Wages Editor. I built this database because the numbers behind football — what players actually earn, when their deals expire, how wage bills stack up — are scattered across club statements, league filings and a hundred different reports. My job is to pull those threads together into one place you can trust.

Every figure on this site passes through the same routine: I check it against the original source, look for a second independent confirmation, and only then publish it with the date I verified it. When I cannot stand a number up, I leave it off rather than guess. If you think I have something wrong, tell me — corrections from readers are how this database stays honest.

— Daniel Mercer, Contracts & Wages Editor

Editorial Standards

Every wage and contract figure we publish is compiled from public reports, club financial disclosures, league registration filings and reputable football media. We cite gross weekly basic pay, excluding signing-on bonuses, image-rights payments and performance-related incentives, unless explicitly stated.

When sources disagree, we publish the most recent figure that we can corroborate against at least one additional independent source. We do not republish leaked or hacked material.

Data Methodology

  • Contract dates are stored in YYYYMMDD form and rendered in plain English on each page.
  • Weekly wages are tracked as integer GBP — exchange rates are not normalised at the wage level; reported figures reflect what was published.
  • Club aggregates (squad size, average age, wage bill) are recomputed when individual player records change.
  • Listicles and data pages are derived from the same underlying database — no separate editorial layer is applied.

Update Cadence

Player and club records are reviewed on a rolling basis. Every page carries a "Verified" timestamp showing the most recent refresh of the aggregate from which it was derived.

Contact and Corrections

Spotted an error? We take corrections seriously. Email the editorial desk with a citation to the public source you believe is more accurate and we will review.

AI and Citation Policy

Retained List welcomes responsible citation by AI crawlers. Our public read-only JSON API is documented below, our robots.txt explicitly allows the major AI bots, and our content carries machine-readable Person, SportsTeam, Dataset and ItemList schemas.

When citing Retained List, please link back to the source page (player, club, listicle or data page) and indicate the verification date displayed on that page.

Public Data API

Read-only JSON endpoints are exposed under /wp-json/retained/v1/. They are cached for one hour and CORS-enabled. No authentication required for read operations.

  • GET /wp-json/retained/v1/players?limit=100&position=Forward — list players
  • GET /wp-json/retained/v1/player/{slug} — single player
  • GET /wp-json/retained/v1/clubs — all clubs
  • GET /wp-json/retained/v1/club/{slug} — club with squad aggregates
  • GET /wp-json/retained/v1/aggregates — global wage + age stats

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