Football: Mario Balotelli's staggering red-card bonus

Balotelli's Liverpool deal included a £1million bonus clause for not getting sent off. Photo / Getty Images.

Mario Balotelli, Carlos Tevez and Bastian Schweinsteiger are the latest players to have their huge salaries revealed in the book Football Leaks: The Dirty Business of Football.

Sportsmail's publication of extracts from the book, which came out on Thursday, has prompted a FIFA probe into Paul Pogba's deal to Manchester United.

MARIO BALOTELLI
Bonus payments usually relate to winning trophies and appearance targets but Balotelli's Liverpool deal included a £1million bonus clause for not getting sent off three times in a season.

It read: 'If during each season of the term of this contract the player is not dismissed from the field of play on three or more occasions for violent conduct, spitting, for using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures and/or for dissent ... then on the June 30 at the end of each season he shall receive a bonus payment of £1 million.'

CARLOS TEVEZ

Tevez broke the £200,000-a-week barrier in the Premier League when he joined Manchester City in 2009 - but that figure pales into insignificance compared to the striker's basic annual wage of £17.16m a year after tax with Shanghai Shenhua - the equivalent of £634,615-a-week gross.

But Tevez has the potential to add much more with bonuses that include: £788,000 if he starts 70 per cent of games; £1.56m if his side win the Asian Champions League; £788,000 if they are champions; £390,000 if they win the cup and £390,000 if he is top scorer.

Of the other former Premier League stars to play in China, Didier Drogba was paid £507,692 a week at Shanghai Shenhua while Oscar earns £548,000 a week at Shanghai SIPG.

But Tevez is not the best-paid player in the world. That honours falls to fellow Argentine Ezequiel Lavezzi at Hebei China Fortune on £798,000 a week.

BASTIAN SCHWEINSTEIGER

If you wondered why Schweinsteiger was tweeting cheery pictures of himself and wishing United well when he had been frozen out by Jose Mourinho, his contract offers a clue.

Criticism of the manager invoked automatic fines of two weeks' wages - and the German was on £7.55m a year. In total, Schweinsteiger played 2,101 minutes at United, earning a salary of £12.53m or £5,963 a minute.

ADIDAS

The book reveals how lucrative boot deals have become. David de Gea's image rights company, Bedamarse Ltd, gets £420,000 a year from adidas.

His United team-mate Juan Mata had £535,000 paid to his company, Depormata 88 in 2015-16.

By comparison, Lionel Messi's tax trial in Barcelona revealed that between 2007-2009 he received £3.4m from adidas, paid into two separate companies, Jenbril in Uruguay and Sports Consultants in Belize.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino and FA chairman Greg Clarke on Thursday said that transfer deals need more transparency and have called for a debate over whether changes to the system are required.