Mateo Retegui earns a record-breaking salary in Saudi Arabia: €80 million over four years.

Mateo Retegui is preparing to begin a new football adventure with the Saudi club Al Qadsiah. The deal is now finalized: only official announcements are missing, but an agreement has been reached with both Atalanta, the club's owner, and the player himself. The deal's impressive figures, reaching €200 million gross, are convincing. According to multiple sources, Atalanta will receive approximately €68 million net, a figure reached after a lengthy back-and-forth between the Italian club's initial request and the Arab club's progressive offers. The final offer, including bonuses, proved sufficient to unlock the deal, thanks in part to Retegui's commitment expressed in the last few hours.

Retegui's record-breaking contract

The most impressive part of the deal, however, concerns the player's contract: four years for a total of €80 million, including a base salary (€16 million per year) and bonuses (€4 million per year), if he stays in Saudi Arabia for the entire duration of the agreement. To give an idea of the figures offered to the Italian national team striker, this is how much he will earn:

• 1,670,000 euros per month
• 54,794.52 euros per day
• 2,283.11 euros per hour
• 38.06 euros per minute
• 0.63 euros per second

These numbers highlight the exceptional significance of the agreement reached and explain the speed with which Retegui accepted the proposal.

Comparison with the previous contract

At Atalanta, Retegui earned a salary of €2 million a year. The new contract is therefore ten times higher, a significant pay increase that played a decisive role in the player's decision. The increase was further reinforced by the extension of the agreement from three to four years, proposed directly by Al Qadsiah to convince the striker and expedite negotiations. According to reports, the player's desire was decisive. Retegui clearly communicated to Atalanta his intention to move to Saudi Arabia, also supported by his family, particularly his father Carlos, a key figure in his son's career decisions. Faced with such a firm stance and an unmarketable offer, Atalanta considered the financial opportunity to be a unique one.

Mateo Retegui's climb

What's most impressive about Mateo Retegui's new contract and record-breaking salary is the ascent the Argentine-born Italian footballer has made in just five years. The specialized website Capology reports that in the 2019-2020 season, the player earned €500,000 per season while playing for Estudiantes . This salary remained at the same level for the following two seasons before his breakthrough with Tigre , where he scored 30 goals in 48 appearances.

In the 2023-24 season, he arrived in Italy with Genoa and signed a €1.9 million-a-year contract. At that time, too, Retegui had been courted by Saudi Arabia with an offer of €8 million per season, which was rejected. A year later, he moved to Atalanta and made another small step in his contract. The Bergamo-based club managed to convince him with a four-year contract worth €2.2 million per season. Only 365 days passed before the striker earned ten times that amount.