The Phantom

David Beckham is British football's richest player with a personal fortune of £87m, according to a new poll. Beckham's wealth is almost three times that of the next richest player, Michael Owen, who is worth £32m.

Robbie Fowler has amassed £28m, followed by Sol Campbell (£27m), Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs and Andriy Shevchenko (all £22m).

Roman Abramovich is comfortably the richest investor in British football, with a fortune of £10.8bn.

Despite his enormous wealth, Abramovich is only the second richest man in the country, behind steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, worth an estimated £13.2bn.

It is thought that Abramovich has ploughed around £440m into Chelsea. After Abramovich the next richest investors in British football are Spurs stakeholder Joe Lewis (£2.1bn) and Celtic shareholder Dermot Desmond (£1.25bn), according to the survey in FourFourTwo magazine.

Beckham earns £4.4m per season at Real Madrid and has a number of lucrative sponsorship deals that earned him £19m last year.

Wayne Rooney and his fiancée Coleen McLoughlin could threaten the Beckhams in future years, with their fortune up to £20m from £6m last season.

British football's richest players
David Beckham £87m
Michael Owen £32m
Robbie Fowler £28m
Sol Campbell £27m
Rio Ferdinand £22m
Ryan Giggs £22m
Andriy Shevchenko £22m
Thierry Henry £21m
Wayne Rooney £20m
Michael Ballack £18m

FOOTBALL'S TOP INVESTORS
R Abramovich (Chelsea) £10.8bn
J Lewis (Spurs) £2.1bn
D Desmond (Celtic) £1.25bn
M Glazer (Man Utd) £1.05bn
T Hemmings (Ch'ton, Preston) £900m
Sir A Sugar (Spurs) £790m
R Lerner (Villa) £789m
D Murray (Rangers) £650m
S Keswick, family (Cheltenham) £644m
D Sullivan (Birmingham) £595m