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What is the most lucrative contract ever awarded to a professional soccer player?

In January 2007 it was announced that midfielder David Beckham was leaving the Real Madrid squad to join the Los Angeles Galaxy, part of Major League Soccer (MLS), the North American men’s pro league. The contract included a $6.5 million annual salary, sponsorship deals estimated at $25 million per year, merchandise sales worth approximately $10 million per year, and a $10 million per year share of club profits. In total, the five-year contract would award him in the range of $250 million, putting him third at the time on the list of the world’s highest-paid athletes, behind only Tiger Woods and Michael Schumacher.

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Did you know …

that David Beckham’s agent is none other than Simon Fuller, creator of American Idol?

Why did spies kill Lutz Eigendorf?

On March 20, 1979, after a friendly match between the East German team Berliner FC Dynamo and West German club 1. FC Kaiserslautern, East German midfielder Lutz Eigendorf defected to the West. It might not have been the wisest move, given that FC Dynamo was under the patronage of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. After German reunification in 1990 and the subsequent opening of Stasi files it was revealed that the traffic accident on March 5, 1983, that led to Eigendorf ’s death two days later had been staged as an assassination by the Stasi.