Atletico Madrid wages: Top 10 highest-paid players; Liverpool striker target only 7th

Atletico Madrid have established themselves as the club with the third-highest expectations in Spain – and they have LaLiga’s third-highest wage bill as well.

While the wage bills of Real Madrid and Barcelona blow the rest of the division’s clubs out of the water, Atletico are the only other LaLiga outfit paying more than €100m per year in player wages as things stand. They even have the league’s highest-paid player for one position, as well as the highest-paid manager in the world: Diego Simeone.

Success has come Atleti’s way during Simeone’s decade-plus reign, including their only two LaLiga titles this side of the millennium.

But which of their players are earning the highest salaries? Here are the top 10, ranked by their weekly wages.

Note, the conversions to pounds are rounded to the nearest thousand and reflect the exchange rates at the time of writing, which are subject to change.

=10. Koke (€128,269 / £110,000)

A product of Atleti’s academy, Koke has been a first-team player since 2009 and captain since 2019.

Still a one-club man, he has well over 600 appearances for them to his name, which means he is their all-time record appearance maker.

All in, Koke has earned a healthy nine-figure sum in wages from Atleti throughout his one-club career.

The best salary he was ever on was €16m per year (€307,692 per week) between 2019 and 2024, before he accepted a significant paycut of nearly 60% to sign a new deal in March 2024.

❤️🤍 Atleti? My life. pic.twitter.com/FK7WDJpqKv

— Atlético de Madrid (@atletienglish) March 25, 2024

Koke’s contract is due to expire at the end of the season, but he is still only 33 and Atleti are expected to offer him fresh terms to stay for 2025-26 as well.

In that case, the Madrid native stands every chance of surpassing 700 appearances for Atleti.

=10. Rodrigo De Paul (€128,269 / £110,000)

Atleti invested in a player entering the prime years of his career when they signed a 27-year-old Rodrigo De Paul from Udinese in 2021.

Bringing the former Valencia midfielder back to LaLiga, they gave him a five-year contract worth €6.67m per season.

Despite his status being enhanced in December 2022 when he became a World Cup winner with Argentina, De Paul is still on the same deal he agreed when joining Atleti, which is due to expire next year.

The club have been giving serious thought to a new deal for De Paul, who is now in his thirties.

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8. Saul Niguez (€134,615 / £116,000)

Saul signed a nine-year contract with Atleti back in 2017, worth around €12m per year, but his career hasn’t quite gone as envisaged towards the end of that deal.

The Atleti academy product has spent the 2024-25 season on loan at Sevilla, who have been covering €5m of his wages while his parent club have been topping up the remaining €7m.

Saul has likely played his last game for Atleti, who he reached the tally of 427 appearances for.

Sevilla have the option to keep Saul, who has even worn their captain’s armband a few times this season, and take him off Atleti’s books for good.

7. Julian Alvarez (€136,154 / £117,000)

Atleti broke their club transfer record to sign Julian Alvarez from Manchester City last summer, spending up to €95m.

However, he is only seventh on their list of highest earners; his six-year deal is worth just over €7m per season.

It’s still a slight increase on what he was being paid by City, who he left because of a desire to become more of a focal point.

He’s got what he wanted, too, going on to score more than 25 goals in his debut season in Spain thanks to the platform he’s been provided.

Whether or not Atleti can keep Alvarez for the full duration of his contract remains to be seen. The Argentina striker has drawn historic interest from Liverpool, who haven’t made a new approach yet but will be in the market for a new centre-forward in the summer.

6. Cesar Azpilicueta (€153,846 / £132,000)

Another former Premier League player, ex-Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta returned to his native Spain in 2023 to sign for Atleti.

He walked away from a contract worth more than €10m per season in the Premier League and accepted a deal worth €8m per season in Madrid.

His contract was initially just valid for one year, but an extension was activated on the same terms after his 34-appearance debut season. That renewed deal will run out this summer.

The 35-year-old defender isn’t expected to stay beyond then.

=4. Axel Witsel (€160,192 / £138,000)

Axel Witsel once earned himself a €20m-a-year contract when joining Chinese Super League side Tianjin Quanjian in 2017.

However, he only played there for one year before returning to European football with Borussia Dortmund. He ultimately winded up at the Metropolitano Stadium in 2022.

Witsel signed a one-year contract with Atleti, but they renewed that deal as early as the following February. He again made a one-season commitment to the club in June 2024.

Simeone has helped Witsel adapt his game as someone who can help out at centre-back as well as in his natural position of midfield.

Witsel now has more than 100 appearances to his name, but he has barely got off the bench in the second half of the season, which indicates he is drifting out of the club’s plans ahead of his contract expiring.

=4. Marcos Llorente (€160,192 / £138,000)

It had been 13 years since a player had moved from Real Madrid to Atleti by the time Marcos Llorente made that move in 2019.

While it’s a rare path, it’s one that has suited Llorente, who has gone on to make almost 250 appearances for Atleti.

Aged 24 when he made the cross-city switch, Llorente secured himself a salary worth more than €40,000 per week when signing his first contract with the Rojiblancos, which was almost double what their rivals had him on.

Llorente signed a new and improved deal in the summer of 2021, whereby he now earns more than €160,000 per week – almost quadruple his original Atleti pay packet.

The versatile midfielder turned 30 in January, but still has two years remaining on his contract.

3. Conor Gallagher (€173,077 / £149,000)

Emotions were high last summer when, as the final year of his contract approached, Chelsea decided to sell boyhood fan and academy graduate Conor Gallagher.

After rejecting an offer to extend his stay at Stamford Bridge, concerned about how big a part he would have to play, Gallagher headed abroad in a €40m move.

The contract he signed in the Spanish capital is more lucrative than what he was earning at Chelsea. In his last season in the Premier League, his wages were £50,000 per week; they are now nearly three times that.

Gallagher was always holding out for around £150,000 per week, but as TEAMtalk revealed during the process, Chelsea weren’t willing to meet those demands.

Atleti were more accommodating and he has made more than 40 appearances for them in his first season overseas.

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2. Antoine Griezmann (€240,385 / £207,000)

Antoine Griezmann has long held ambitions of moving to MLS in the later stages of his career, but he doesn’t need it to be for financial reasons. Instead, it would be for his love of American sports.

After all, the France international has already pocketed an enormous amount of career earnings over the years.

He was once earning more than €880,000 per week from Atleti in the season before they sold him to Barcelona, after his infamous ‘La Decision’ documentary announcement that he was staying.

During his time in Catalonia, Griezmann earned €71.5m from just two seasons. For a club struggling with their wage bill, Barcelona soon found that a problem.

Since he has been back at Atleti on a permanent basis, Griezmann has reduced his salary to €12.5m per year.

Now 34 and having become Atleti’s all-time top scorer, Griezmann is approaching the final year of his contract with the club.

According to the latest reports, he is likely to stay for it – and is even on course to agree a new contract until 2027 to spread his remaining salary over two years.

In that case, he would be paid €6.25m next season (and the year after), which is the same amount as players like Robin Le Normand and Jose Maria Gimenez in joint-11th place on the current payroll.

1. Jan Oblak (€400,577 / £344,000)

With Jan Oblak, Atleti have been grateful to have one of the best goalkeepers in the world over the past decade.

They bought him from Benfica when he was just 21 years old, making him the most expensive LaLiga goalkeeper signing in history but giving him a salary worth not much over €30,000 per week.

Oblak was ever-present in his second season. Partway through, in February 2016, he earned a new contract worth almost double his original one.

And by April 2019, Oblak’s salary became astronomical. By this point, he was on course to winning his fourth Zamora Trophy in LaLiga, awarded to the goalkeeper with the lowest goals conceded per game ratio.

In recognition of his sublime talents, Atleti multiplied his earnings more than six times over, promoting him to a bracket above €400,000 per week.

And when they renewed his deal again in July 2022, his salary stayed at that staggering level. It makes him the best-paid goalkeeper in LaLiga; Real Madrid’s no.1 Thibaut Courtois (who Oblak effectively replaced at Atleti) is on €288,462 per week and Barcelona’s Marc-Andre Ter Stegen is on €121,154.

The only goalkeeper who earns more than Oblak is Bayern Munich’s Manuel Neuer.

Oblak is among the top five best-paid players in the whole of LaLiga and remains under contract until 2028.