Messi extra soccer income.

"The ball stays glued to his foot, I've seen great players in my career, but I've never seen anyone with Messi's ball control."          - Diego Maradona    

30 year old Argentine, Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccitini, arguably the best footballer that ever walked this earth, is ranked by Forbes as at 2017 as the third highest paid athlete in the world as an amount of £260,000 a week. Although in a deal which he is yet to sign but already agreed upon with his current club, FC Barcelona, he'll earn an improved fee of £504,000 per week, making him the second highest paid athlete behind Shanghai Shenhua's Carlos Tevez.

However, Messi earns a sumptuous extra income off the pitch. The 30 year old Argentine captain has long been an ambassador for the world's second largest sportswear brand, Adidas, and his existing deal is worth a staggering US$24 million a year. Adidas has a whole soccer cleats series under Messi banner and every year multiple new Messi boots are released.

He also has lucrative endorsement deals with the likes of Pepsi, EA Sports, Samsung, Walkers, Gillette, Audi and other companies through which he reportedly racks in another $5 to $8 million annually. So looking at his current professional contract with Barcelona and his endorsement deals he is making around $70 million a year in annual income making him the second highest earning footballer in the world behind his widely acclaimed nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo.

But while Messi does not push lines of underwear, shoes and fragrances like Ronaldo, he has invested in property. Around his birthplace of Rosario in Argentina, for example, he has put money into the Azahares del Parana project (a set of gated communities out of the city) as well as an apartment building in the city centre.

There's almost certainly much more than that, but - as tends to be the case with Messi - it is kept pretty private.

Messi's net worth is estimated to be between £200m and £230m, and probably comes in a touch lower than Ronaldo's. These figures are speculative, though, especially as his business interests tend not to be widely publicised.

Forbes ranked Messi second among athletes on their list of the 100 highest-earning celebrities of 2016, putting his income for the year at $81.5m (£67m), and eighth overall. He was $6.5m behind Ronaldo and some $44m ahead of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was the next footballer on the list.

Messi may not ever quite reach the earning power of the endorsement machine that is Ronaldo, but his new salary package will ensure no other active footballer comes close to him over the next few years.