The question as to whether or not athletes in general and soccer players in particular, should be earning the kind of money theyre earning is more vibrant then ever these days, with clubs paying their players incredible amounts of money each year.
The comparison to other sports is also very relative. A gymnast will train all his life, miss out on a lot of his younger years only to be able to handle a world class performance, but he will still not win as much in his lifetime as one of the highest earning soccer players makes in a year. But thats the markets call and theres no fair in sales share.
Getting back to our topic, its somewhat difficult to judge exactly how much a player makes simply from his club salary, because many wage details are private, due to obvious reasons. As a club manager, you want to create complete harmony in your team and with all of them knowing that player gets paid twice as much as the rest, wont help you out with that.
The highest earning soccer players can also be affected by having their salaries publicly available, because at every less than bright performance, theyll be confronted with a My God! He really should have played...