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Daily Mail
a few seconds ago
- Daily Mail
George Russell's staggering net worth as he nears new £30m-a-year Mercedes deal: Inside F1 star's rich sponsorship empire, stunning luxury car collection - and relationship with business-savvy influencer girlfriend
There can't be many 27-year-old's living the high life like George Russell this year. The British Formula One star is entering his prime, is building a sponsorship empire, travels the world with glamourous girlfriend Carmen Montero Mundt and is closing in on a new Mercedes deal worth an eye-watering £30m-a-year. There had been some nagging doubts about his future with the constructor but Russell is set for a bumper payday, more than doubling his current £12m-a-year package. As Mail Sport's Jonathan McEvoy exclusively revealed this week, negotiations have accelerated over the last few weeks and a source close to the talks confirmed: 'All the main points have been agreed.' Russell's incoming raise will remain well short of Max Verstappen and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton - each on about £60m a year. While he does not yet have the achievements or global fanbase to garner such earnings, his win in Canada and domination over team-mate Kimi Antonelli this season point to his consistent form. He is delivering off the track, too. Russell is extremely marketable and has brands queuing up to represent them. His net worth is currently estimated to be in the region of £15m, though clearly that is set to increase substantially in the next few years. In addition to Mercedes and their high-performance engine division AMG, he has deals with the British Racing Drivers' Club, Bell Helmets, Alpinestars, MDM Designs and sportswear giant Adidas. He even has watch company IWC Schaffhausen backing his wristwear options and he's been seen wearing their Portugieser 'Obsidian' model, which can cost up to £41,200. Russell, a former child karting prodigy who grew up in Norfolk, like many F1 stars, is no stranger to a modelling shoot, either. He adorned the cover of fashion magazine L'Officiel last October and is sharply dressed at number of society events every year. Russell has been pictured at Wimbledon rubbing shoulders with the likes of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, always kitted out in his finery. He was in situ for the final this year, decked out in a tailored double-breasted pin stripe suit alongside girlfriend Mundt. Mundt has been in a relationship with Russell since 2020 and the couple happily live in Monaco together. She has previously worked in finance - as an investor relations associate at Ruffer LLP in London - but recently announced that she is going back to studying. The driver's very glamorous girlfriend - who is originally from Spain and moved to the UK aged 18 - has a business degree from the University of Westminster. Carmen has more than 409,000 followers on Instagram, and often shares snaps of her luxury travels and enviable style online. The couple are understood to have met through friends in London. 'Five years with the most wonderful person I could ever ask for,' Mundt wrote on in honour of their anniversary in February this year. 'Forever proud of who you are and what you do.' She is impressive in her own right with a bachelor's degree in business management and finance and a diploma in asset allocation and risk management from the University of Geneva. When speaking about her work, she previously told followers: 'I always wanted to work in finance. 'My family struggled financially during the global crisis and that determined what I wanted to do from a very young age.' When asked if jetting around the world to watch Russell at races distracted her from her day job, she replied: 'It takes my head away from work and I enjoy the sport and spending time with him. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than G's success.' And the driver has described his other half as 'incredibly supportive'. 'Last year, for the first time, I experienced some fans booing me on a driver's parade. I'd never experienced that before', Russell explained. 'I talk with the people who I trust and love the most and they offer a huge hand.' Mundt is also business savvy when it comes to her own affairs and has her own contracts with major brands as an influencer. He has worked with Dior and Tommy Hilfiger among other luxury companies. Unsurprisingly, Russell ferries Mundt around in a variety of luxury cars from his collection when they're jet-setting around the world. Russell drives for Mercedes and loves their cars away from the track as well The Mercedes star will be backed again as his team's No 1 after their interest in signing Max Verstappen ended No doubt if the performances on the track keep coming, Russell will thrive off it as well He is very much the company man and recently shared on social media that he had his 'dream car'. Russell was spotted crouching next to his new Mercedes AMG ONE, a Formula One inspired hypercar. It has a top speed of 219mph, goes 0-62mph in 2.9 seconds and holds the record for the fastest lap time for a production car on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Much of the tech in the car is similar or the same as that in an F1 vehicle and only 275 of them were made, all by hand. Given the tech and exclusivity, it is perhaps no surprise to see the price tag up at a whopping £2.5million. But Russell has his hands of one now and he'll add it to his existing fleet of Mercedes. Russell usually drives a Mercedes-AMG G 63, an off-roader better suited for the British countryside, while he also has an affection for Mini Mokes, which don't have any roofs or doors. He recently revealed that he typically uses a Mercedes-AMG C 63 S and washes it by hand himself. No doubt in the coming years Russell will add to his collection, especially now he's on the brink of the £30m-a-year deal. His hard work on the track restarts at the Hungarian GP this weekend and the already bountiful fruits of his labour will continue to grow in the years ahead.
The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
BBC debate is nostalgic reminder of English crisis never being far away
Nostalgia for the 1990s remains heavy. Just look at all those stadiums and parks the Gallaghers are filling. Football from the late 20th century has a similar cachet. No VAR, no sportswashing; just good, hard, honest, simple fare, when men were men and pressing was what you did to your Burton suit. If the past is a foreign country then a recent BBC Archive release is a primary source of a time when the continental import remained exotic and not the dominant division of labour. 'Is English Football In Crisis?' asks an edition of On The Line in October 1993, broadcast the night before Graham Taylor's England played a key World Cup qualifier in Rotterdam. You know the match: Brian Moore correctly reading Ronald Koeman's free-kick – 'he's gonna flick one' – and the pathos of Taylor's hectoring of the linesman as England's hopes of qualifying for USA '94 sink into the briny. Such is the soap opera of the English game – its warring factions, its unrelenting thirst for cash – that a crisis is often close, though now further down the food chain than the England team and the Premier League. A televised meeting of 2025's key actors is near unimaginable considering the secrecy many owners maintain, the global span from whence they come and many battles already being in camera through lawyers. The number of talking heads and influencers willing to step into the gaps is almost too grotesque to countenance. Snapshot to 1993 however, 14 months into the life of the Premier League, an entity barely mentioned over 40 minutes, and a room of football men are vehemently defending their corners. Just one woman is visible; the future sports minister Kate Hoey, and just one black face; that of Brendon Batson, deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association. He remains wordless. A raven-haired John Inverdale operates as a Robert Kilroy-Silk/Jerry Springer figure as various blokes in baggy suits – 'some of the most influential and thoughtful people in football' is Inverdale's billing – fight their corners. Here is a time before gym-buff execs, when male-pattern baldness is still legally allowed in boardrooms and exec boxes, when a moustache is anything but ironic. 'The whole game is directed towards winning rather than learning,' complains John Cartwright, recently resigned coach at the Lilleshall national academy, a less than gentle loosener. England's Football Association is swiftly under attack from Hoey over being 'out of touch'. Enter Jimmy Hill, a Zelig of football as player, manager, chair, the revolutionary behind the 1961 removal of the maximum wage, major figure – on and off screen – behind football's growth as a television sport. Few have filled the role of English football man so completely and his responses to Hoey are dismissive, truculent. 'You can only attack one question at a time and I find the attacks are so ignorant,' he rails, defending English coaching. Hill's stance has not travelled well. Within three years, Arsène Wenger, among others, would be upending the sanctity of English coaching exceptionalism. A short film from the ever gloomy Graham Kelly follows. The then-Football Association chief executive dolefully advertises his body's youth development plan before David Pleat's description of English youngsters as merely 'reasonable' rather blows Kelly's cover. Former Manchester City manager Malcolm Allison, by 1993 a long-lost 1960s revolutionary, declares England's kids were behind Ajax's as early as the late-1950s. 'Big Mal', demeanour far more On The Buses than On The Line, cuts the dash of ageing rebel, an Arthur Seaton still restless in his dotage, cast to the fringes as Cassandra. Next the programme's wild card; Eamon Dunphy, footballer turned bestselling writer. The irascible face of Irish punditry for many decades seizes the stage with typical barbed lyricism, hunting down the stuffed shirts who run the game, full j'accuse mode adopted from his opening words. 'English football has historically drawn its talent from the streets but unfortunately it has left its inspiration in the gutter,' he begins his own short film. Dunphy then lashes the 'merchant class' that 'have always wielded power', kicks against the 'subservient', celebrating football's 'free spirited' outsiders. 'Football's greatest men have usually been its saddest – ignored, betrayed or patronised,' says Dunphy, soon enough labelling English football media coverage as 'banal'. 'Where is football's Neville Cardus?' he asks, referencing the Guardian's legendary cricket writer, setting a slew of fellow journalists, including the late David Lacey, also of this parish, on defensive footings. Cast in 1993 as rabble-rousing agent of chaos from across the water, Dunphy would declare himself an Anglophile in his 2013 autobiography, appreciative of the freedom found in 1960s Manchester compared to the illiberal Ireland he came from. Here he despairs for what made English football once so magical, bemoaning Allison's estrangement and that Hill's experience was also confined to the sidelines. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein, a prime Premier League's architect, is next for a Dunphy dagger. 'You seem exceedingly smug about the idea of kids having to pay more for their identity' is a laser-guided attack on replica shirts being replaced each summer. It proves a tinderbox moment. Hill and Professional Footballers' Association chair Gordon Taylor soon fly at each other. 'Get yer facts right, Jim,' hisses Taylor as the subject of player wages ignites a bonfire fanned further by agent Eric Hall's 'monster monster' smirks. Inverdale calls for order and concludes with a round-robin from which Pleat's 'you need an impossible man, a democratic dictator right at the top of football' sounds positively frightening. Somewhere in Pleat's logic may lie the UK government's imminent imposition of an independent football regulator, a process that led today's power brokers into a sustained, bloody battle against such interference. Fast-forward 32 years, through Premier League and Champions League dominance, international failures and successes, foreign talent and investment, profit and sustainability, splintering media landscapes, women's football embodying national pride, much has changed and yet self-interest remains the darkest heart of English football.
The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Tottenham need to find a way to capitalise on legacy of trailblazer Son
Just as opposing fans in the Premier League have experienced feelings of dread over the past decade when Son Heung-min picked up the ball on the edge of their area, there had been a summer of worry among his millions of followers in Asia that his time in England was coming to an end. As the South Korean's legs slowed last season, reports of a move elsewhere gathered pace. His 10 years at Tottenham may have ended with a trophy, the Europa League in May, but the legacy had been in place for some time. The 33-year-old has changed the way Asian players are perceived around the world and much more besides. 'It was the most difficult decision I have made in my career,' an emotional Son said at a Seoul press conference on Saturday before Sunday's pre-season exhibition against Newcastle. 'Such amazing memories. It was so hard to make the decision. I need a new environment to push myself. I need a little bit of change – 10 years is a long time. I came to north London as a kid, 23 years old, such a young age. I leave this club as a grown man, a very proud man.' Son has been the pride of Asian football for years, the first player from the continent to become a genuine Premier League star, a legend at his club. There had been compatriot Park Ji-sung who won titles and respect during seven years at Manchester United, but he was never an automatic starter and, unfairly for a technically excellent and intelligent player, old Three Lungs was praised more for his running, work-rate and stamina. Shinji Kagawa looked like he may reach the next level at Old Trafford but was soon back in Germany. So it was Son, signed from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015, who went on to appear on billboards in north London, Seoul and a lot of cities in between as one of the best-known faces of the world's best-known league. There were 173 goals in 454 competitive games, including the 2020 Puskás Award for that strike against Burnley. In the 2021-2022 season, he scored 23 in the league, sharing the golden boot with Mohamed Salah, another milestone for Asian football. When Harry Kane left Spurs for Bayern Munich, Son stayed and was made captain, and while last season was a relative struggle, for team and player, it ended on a high. Some thought he may stay for one more crack at the Champions League, after doing so much to help Spurs to the final in 2019, but it was not to be. In 2022, I went to Tottenham's sparkling training ground on the northern outskirts of the capital to present the Chuncheon-born native with the Best Footballer in Asia award, a trophy handed out by Titan Sports in China, a country that is not known for its love of Korean football but one that has the utmost respect for Elder Brother Son. He had received the prize in all but three of the 12 years since it became a thing. We discussed our favourite food from his homeland while he tried not to laugh at the Korean language attempts of Hugo Lloris in the next room as the goalkeeper recorded a video message to fans in the Land of the Morning Calm before the club's visit a few weeks later. Tottenham are there once more. 'It's very clear that Sonny will start and lead the team out as captain,' the new Tottenham manager Thomas Frank said. 'If that is the last game for Sonny, what a place to do it here in front of his home fans. It could be a beautiful ending.' And an emotional one. His Premier League performances will be missed in Korea, not least by those bars that hang huge televisions in their windows, showing Tottenham games with a tiny image of his smiling face in the top corner of the screen to show their idol is on the field. Playing time is a big thing for Korean fans after most of Son's predecessors struggled. Park Chu-young joined Arsenal in 2011 but managed just seven league minutes in the red and white corner of north London, inactivity that caused some resentment back home. Son's experience was the opposite. Playing regularly, becoming a star for so long and then captain at a major club also helped grow Tottenham's global fanbase. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion While European estimates of their fans in Asia are unconfirmed, it was claimed in 2022 that there were more than 12 million Spurs supporters in Korea. Whatever the accuracy of that number, there has never been such a popular player – Son has advertised more than 30 brands in his homeland – to play in such a popular league for such a length of time. Tottenham will need to find a way to build on his legacy in Korea and the rest of Asia. For now, though, they just have to find a way to live without Son on the pitch. And fans of the player on the world's biggest continent will also have to get used to Premier League action without the forward. A Chinese journalist once said that Son showed the world that Asia can produce a player as exciting as any from Africa or South America. As legacies go, that's pretty good.
