Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have already reached billionaire status, but the superstar duo don’t hold a candle to 28-year-old Faiq Bolkiah
It’s a logical school of thought that the top-earning footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi through their weekly salaries and lucrative endorsements are also the richest in the world. But there are exceptions to the rule, especially when you just so happen to be related to royalty.
No footballer comes close to banking the eye-watering wages that Ronaldo receives, with the 41-year-old pocketing a cool £3.42 million a week from his contract with Saudi Pro League outfit Al-Nassr. Messi’s contract with Inter Miami is worth £20.2m per annum.
Yet the multi-millionare duo are mere dots in the financial stratosphere when compared to Faiq Bolkiah. The 25-year-old is of Bruniean descent but was born in Los Angeles, United States, and is understood to be worth around £15.7 billion ($20bn).
He is the son of Jefri Bolkiah, a member of the Bruneian royal family and also the nephew of the Sultan of Brunei. His family connection puts him in line to inherit a chunk of the Asian royal family’s £200bn fortune.
Per Forbes, Ronaldo has an estimated net worth of £908.6 million ($1.2bn), with Messi a little further back on £833m ($1.1bn). But they are far away from matching Bolkiah, whose personal net worth is estimated to be seven times larger than Ronaldo and Messi’s combined wealth.
For context, he could purchase the Dallas Cowboys NFL team – the most valuable sports franchise in the world at £10.2 billion ($13.5bn) – and still have around £5bn to play with. That’s no small amount.
While he is the wealthiest footballer in the world, Bolkiah didn’t match up in the talent bracket. The 28-year-old endured a torrid time in England after coming through the academy system at Southampton, Leicester and Chelsea but struggled to make the grade.
He was first spotted by the Saints at the age of 13, before being picked up by Chelsea. It was during a thumping defeat for Southampton’s Under-16s side against the Blues where Bolkiah first caught the eye.
“At the time, Chelsea’s age group (U-16) was very, very strong. They won everything. It was the age group with Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, and a lot of top players,” Bolkiah told Mainstand.
“As a young player in England, everyone looked up to the players at Chelsea because they were the best. They won every youth tournament. We went there and lost 8-0 or 9-0, but it was one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life by far. I don’t know how but even though we lost a lot, I showed a lot of what I could do.”
Though he earned a contract with the Blues, Bolkiah struggled to impress after arriving at Cobham. With the likes of Tammy Abraham making it through his age group, he left the Blues in December 2015 for Leicester.
While he reflected on his stay at the Foxes as “amazing”, he never made a first-team appearance and decided to move on in 2020. He later joined Portuguese outfit Maritimo, a decision he now regrets.
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“Maritimo said to me, ‘You’ll come here, you’ll play,’ so I said, ‘I just want to be here for a year. The main thing for me is I want to play.’ Obviously, that didn’t happen. I definitely regret moving there,” he said later.
“I feel like there was a lot of politics to do with it as well, why Maritimo wanted me. I didn’t feel like they were being fully honest. With the clubs in Europe, and definitely at the last club I was at in Portugal, it had [an effect]. I’ve seen it as clear as day.”
Bolkiah now plays for Thai League 1 strugglers Ratchaburi but is very much on the fringes and has no chance of playing in the World Cup. In the 2025/26 campaign, he made just two appearances out of a possible 30 for his club, but still sees Asia as the right move for him.
He said: “I never had (the thought) in my head that I would come to Asia. I sat down with my agent, my advisors and my family members, and I just said to them, ‘I can’t risk going to another club, them signing me for reasons outside of football, and not playing, wasting another year or two years’.”
His football career may not have panned out as he planned. But Bolkiah can still stake his claim as the richest footballer in the world – and not even Ronaldo or Messi can take that away from him.
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