Alex Ferguson yesterday signed a new three-year contract with Manchester United which will make him the best-paid manager in Britain.
Ferguson's basic salary will reportedly be doubled and, if those claims are correct, he will pocket £5 million over the next three seasons, which works out at £1.67 million a year or £32,500 a week.
United have catapulted Ferguson to the top of the earnings league, above Tottenham's George Graham and Newcastle's Ruud Gullit, as reward for his phenomenal success during his 13 years at Old Trafford.
This decade he has won four league titles, three FA Cups, one League Cup and one European Cup Winners' Cup. This season he has also guided United to within six games of the dream Treble of Champions' Cup, Premiership and FA Cup.
Ferguson (57) claims he has lost none of his passion for the game. "My hunger for success remains undiminished and I will be striving to ensure that the next three years are as successful as the last 13 have been," he said.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger congratulated Ferguson, saying: "He must be truly one of the greatest managers the game has seen."
United had initially maintained that contract talks would wait until the end of the season, but they decided to begin negotiations at the start of the year and preliminary discussions began four months ago.
Talks between the two sides went on in the background as Ferguson closed in on the Treble and last month he secured the club's first appearance in the Champions' Cup final for 31 years.
Ferguson had made it clear that the best managers should not be paid less than the best players, and in past seasons his young stars at Old Trafford have overtaken him in the salary scale.
The agreement further underlines Ferguson's millionaire status and next season is his money-spinning testimonial with United.
Ferguson's existing four-year agreement, which he signed after winning the second Double in 1996, still had over 12 months to run and his new deal will start in July.
Another boost for United yesterday was the news that they are rated the third best team in the world by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics.
Brazilian side Palmeiras are the top club in the world under the IFFHS' Club World Ranking system, while United's opponents in the Champions' Cup final on May 26th, Bayern Munich, are second.
Chelsea are sixth in the rankings and newly-crowned Scottish champions Rangers are eighth, but there is no place for defending Premiership champions Arsenal.
Meanwhile, Arsene Wenger has come up with a new way of describing Chelsea's cantankerous, outspoken chairman Ken Bates - calling him "a very sensitive boy".
Wenger was responding to reports that Bates is considering suing him over his weekend comments on escalating wage bills in the Premiership.
Bates was furious at headlines like - `Wenger accuses Chelsea of cheating' and he told The Mirror: "He (Wenger) is an idiot for calling us cheats and he's also out of order because as I recall when he was coach at Monaco they survived on gates of 3,500 - because they were funded by Prince Rainier."
But Wenger said: "I didn't mention Chelsea at all in what I said - or maybe once when I was asked about them and I answered that I did not know if they had an extra income.
"I also said that if clubs spent more than they can afford then that is nearly cheating, but I didn't mention any particular club.
"If Ken Bates is thinking of suing me then he must be a very sensitive boy, but I am not worried about what he says."
World's Top 10 Teams: 1, Palmeiras; 2, Bayern Munich; 3, Manchester Utd; 4, Bologna; 5, Parma; 6, Chelsea; 7, Inter Milan; 8, Rangers; 9, Dynamo Kiev; 10 Real Madrid.
