An estimated £4,007,692 a week: that’s Cristiano Ronaldo’s wage at Al-Nassr, and it alone pulls the average forward salary in our tracked database up to £86,293 a week. The median forward earns £40,000 a week. That gap between average and median is why most “average footballer salary” headlines mislead more than they inform.
What’s the difference between average and median wages?
The average adds every wage together and divides by the number of players. One contract worth millions can drag that number far above what a typical player earns. The median ignores the extremes. It lines every player up from lowest to highest paid and takes the one in the middle. Our tracked database covers 1,035 players, with wage estimates for 954 of them, so the comparison below draws on a large enough sample to hold up position by position. Definitions for the contract terms used here sit in our glossary.
How big is the gap by position?
Every position in our data shows the same pattern: average wages sit well above median wages, and the maximum in each group is set by one or two outlier contracts rather than the norm.
| Position | Players tracked | Average £/week | Median £/week | Highest £/week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forward | 202 | £86,293 | £40,000 | £4,007,692 |
| Midfielder | 277 | £63,416 | £40,000 | £416,566 |
| Defender | 345 | £51,272 | £35,000 | £410,000 |
| Goalkeeper | 130 | £44,894 | £30,000 | £410,000 |
See the full breakdown on our position pay gap page.
Who is skewing the numbers?
A small number of contracts do most of the work in pulling position averages upward. In our tracked data, three players sit far above everyone else at their positions:
- Cristiano Ronaldo (Al-Nassr): an estimated £4,007,692 a week, more than 100 times the median forward wage.
- Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid): an estimated £600,962 a week.
- Erling Haaland (Manchester City): an estimated £525,000 a week.
Remove Ronaldo from the forward group and the average forward wage would fall sharply, even though the median forward wage would barely move, because the median doesn’t care how high the highest earner sits. That’s the core reason our highest-paid players list and a position’s “average wage” figure tell two different stories.
Which position has the widest average-to-median gap?
Forwards show the widest split. Their average wage of £86,293 a week is more than double the median of £40,000. Midfielders sit at roughly 1.6 times their median, defenders at roughly 1.5 times, and goalkeepers at roughly 1.5 times. The pattern makes sense once you consider transfer fees and marketing value: clubs pay a premium for proven goalscorers, and that premium concentrates in a handful of contracts at the top of the forward pool rather than spreading evenly. Goalkeepers, by contrast, show the flattest spread of the four positions, with the smallest gap between what a typical keeper earns and what the average suggests.
Why does the average-median gap matter when you read a wage story?
A single “average wage of £86,293 a week” figure for forwards makes it sound like a typical striker earns close to that. Our data shows the typical forward, the one at the midpoint of the group, earns £40,000 a week, less than half the average. The same logic applies whenever wage inflation is reported: a rising average can reflect a few new mega-contracts rather than pay growth across the squad. Our wage distribution data shows exactly how skewed the spread is, so a headline average can be checked against what the middle of the market actually earns.
What should you check before trusting an “average” wage figure?
Ask whether the figure is an average or a median, ask how many players sit in the sample, and check whether one or two outlier contracts could be doing the lifting. In our tracked data, every position’s average sits above its median, and the size of that gap tells you how concentrated the pay is at the top. A position with a small average-to-median gap, like goalkeepers, has wages spread fairly evenly. A position with a large gap, like forwards, has a small number of contracts setting the headline number while most players earn well below it.