Not very well obviously! See above! No, you are crap! That's why you rode the pine. Wrong again, crap plyers like YOU "are given minimal opportunity to think for themselves." Good for you! Based on what OBJECTIVE criteria? It's Michael, MORON! Vick, Michael QB 6-0 215 22 2 Virginia Tech Has it ever dawned on you alternate universe-seeking CANDYASSED COWARDS how much better the UMNT could be if ALL of our field players had speed equal to or greater than DMB? Obviously a concept beyond your ability to comprehend. As long as American Football Soccer "FANS" like you represent the face and voice of American Soccer, Soccer WELL NEVER SUCEED in the United States. If you truly love Football Soccer and want your chosen sport to grow; STFU Dr. Frank "The Wanker" DeFord!!!
The whole failing of this argument is that soccer, in many ways, requires similar skill sets to basketball, not American Football. In basketball, its more about quickness and agility, not just flat out speed. You have to be able to create your own shot, play well on offense and defense, and have a certain meausure of creativity. I think we need to look at guys like Vick, TJ Duckett, Jerome Bettis, Brian Urlacher, Dexter Coakley, etc. and say..."See, World, we could really dominate Rugby if we wanted to!!" Incidentally, though, after yesterday...I want to put Plaxico Burress on my roster as a target forward...
WRONG!!! Speed kills in American Football on a 55 X 120 yard playing field!!! Speed kills in Football-Soccer on a 65 X 120 meter playing field. WRONG AGAIN Goalie!!!
The only thing I can't comprehend is how you are the only person on bigsoccer unaware of the homoerotic nature of your fascination with the NFL.
Personally, I would take the morons who start and perpetuate threads like these seriously if, when they talked about "our best athletes," they might include people like wrestlers, nordic skiers, tri-athletes, ets. You know, people whose physical capacities have been measured in labs and have been shown to be superior, in general, to most of the top performers in our big-money sports. The fact that these posters only pick guys ultra-hyped by Sportscenter and shoe manufacturers suggests very strongly to me that they're marketing victims who have absolutely nothing interesting to tell me about soccer, or for that matter, any other sport.
I was making a joke based on the likelihood of Vick going on to have an NFL career similar to Kordell Stewart's. I would've assumed you could've caught that. But if you want to debate that issue, we need to go to the Other Sports boards. And that "speed kills" crap.... there are a couple of differences between soccer and track. The use of a ball is one, and the fact that it's a team sport is another. There are more, but this is probably too much for you to comprehend.
Your joke/comparison is very flawed. Vick is so much better than Kordell it's scary. Vick is the MJ if NFL.
This thread was about Mike Vick, not any football player. Vick is a starting NFL quarterback, which to succeed requires as much, if not more, creativity, decision making, agility, etc. as any position in soccer or basketball. In addition to having the mind to be a NFL quaterback, he is physically dominant (speed, quickness, ability to evade defenders, throwing arm). He is in only his second year, and did not start most of last year. IF he remains healthy, he will dominate in a manner we have never seen (he already has for portions of this year).
[voice of inferior brown people] NONE Master, Mexico has not and will never produce WORLD CLASS athletes. I am sorry that I even doubted the supremacy that the USA would have in soccer if they lured to soccer their basketball and american football players. I, Mexican pawn, grovel at your white, superior, and so very obviously faster and stronger feet and promise never EVER to do so again.[/voice of inferior brown people] Seriously though Cam, how many MINUTES have you played in organized soccer. Just curious.
Sorry for going to far...I honestly don't attack people, never have before, and I didn't mean to here. If you thought so, my apologies. I am definatly not paranoid about football. I love soccer and sports in general. And I never attack another sport because I 've played most of them and realize that every sport is hard in its own way (I might argue whether a sport is a sport though). When I started this thread my initial uesiton is what happens if you meld athletic talent like Vick's with soccer skills. I love that idea and I love that its going to happen here in America before it happens anywhere else. I wasn't commenting on either sport really. But then people got into an arguement of what sports have better atheletes. Which is comparing apples to oranges. To that I said a football player wouldn't be able to play soccer and a soccer player wouldn't be able to play football. But the reason I got annoyed at your post (i'll admit, I posted way to fast and should have thought before posting) was that I thought you were saying that Football players lack imagination and creativity and the panache that soccer players need. A player without those attributes will never be anything more than a good athelete. Those are the skills that make players like Vick, Barry Sanders, deion great. Play without those skills, and your basically at the mercy of the player lined up across from you. Sorry if I offended you earlier but I hope you can understand why I got annoyed, even though I did mis-understand what you were saying.
If you think someone who uses the word "homoerotic" in that sense is homophobic, you need to learn what the word "homoerotic" means, especially in the context of psychoanalytic cultural criticism. That might require reading books, but I think you might be able to handle it.
While we're on this topic, appoo... while I do think these threads are silly, I wish I'd not typed "morons who start these threads," since I don't think you're a moron, judging by your posts. I stand by my statement that I'd take these threads more seriously if people would take the time to consider that, maybe, our best athletes aren't those in the most lucrative professions, as triathletes, wrestlers, cyclists, nordic skiers (okay, both of them who are world class from the US at the moment) also have the dedication and the athleticism necessary to be decent soccer players.
Thanks I appreciate it...but I just proved that I can be a moron, and actually I never thought about your 2nd part. A good example of that is swimming. One of the most draining sports around. For my money, Water Polo and boxing are probably the two toughest sports I have ever attempted. Unfortunatly, they don't get the publicity that the main stream sports do (even soccer) so its kind of pointless to compare since most people don't know about them. Kind of forces you to stick with Football, basketball, etc.
Actual proof... My friend is an ex-Olympic speedskater and never really played football or soccer. He got a chance to play some touch football with some of the Packers the other day through his business, and they were amazed at how good he was. They couldn't catch him. They actually joked about him trying out for the team as a kick returner. Obviously touch football is different than real football, but in general the same skill set applies. This same guy had one of the highest recordings ever for lung efficiency (the rate that blood is oxygenated in your lungs), so he is obviously a great athlete... I am sure, however, that he could not have represented himself as well playing pickup soccer with an MLS team. I have played soccer with him and he stinks.
Michael Vick et al Would Michael Vick be a great soccer player if he were raised with the ball at his feet? Don't know, not possible to answer for a single player. However, the Africanization of European soccer offers ample proof that athletic and motivated (i.e., poor) kids will make major inroads into professional soccer if given half a chance. You'd have to have your head up your posterior not to grant that U.S. African Americans would have a major effect on the U.S. soccer scene if they took up the sport in earnest. If not Michael Vick or Allen Iverson specifically, then others.
SPEED KILLS http://www.sams-army.com/index.php?Mlist=content_full&Article_id=105 "It took the team until the Costa Rica match before they truly started exploiting a height and athleticism advantage against the opposition despite an utter demolition of Panama in their last group game." "At the same time, it's also about time we take a harsh look at some of our great but aging and dare we say, slowing, veterans." "Brandi Chastain is still fantastic in defense but her speed, or lack thereof, could be a concern. In a one on one with a Trinidad forward Chastain almost got beaten for speed by the attacker."
Your obsession with Athleticism in soccer is quite hilarious, Mr. "trago" Cam "ote". In reality it shows your utter ignorance of our beloved sport. I've noticed many times your latinphobic ramblings all over the boards and I really believe you post here because you know soccer is important to many "foreign" people and it give you a chance to vent your xenophobic traumas. Quite pathetic, really.
This prety much SUMS UP BigSoccer. Someone ripping on someone else for a completely MADE UP FREAKIN' thread. I am sitting here at work laughing out loud. Precious!
Well, I have never seen any of them play defense...certainly Vick and McNabb are creative and are able to improvise on the football field, so maybe that elusiveness would be good in soccer, but I was really just pointing out that someone like Jason Terry or Steve Francis has more similar skill sets to that of a soccer player. Not to necessarily say they would be better.
But that's besides the point. Soccer isn't losing players to these sports like it does to the big three of Baseball, Basketball and Football. So it's not just the theoreticals of a Michael Vick, but the realities of Seneca Wallace, Shane Walton and Nomar Garciaparra. I think it's indisputable that the big name sports siphon off athletic talent from Soccer. I think one result is that a lot of our best current talents are 5'7" since those sports don't have much use for guys like that. I think it's also indisputable that athletic ability can be very important in Soccer. The point made about how not all World Class athletes who play Soccer are great soccer players. True, but the point is that if you treat the two skill sets (World Class Athleticism, and excellent Soccer related skills) as probabilities independent of one another, the higher percentage of players you have from each group, the more likely it is you're going to find guys who have both. (Or if WC Athlete = x% and Soccer skills = y%, then WC Athlete AND Soccer skills = x%*y%). It's not enough to spit out a few World Class athletes and force them to play soccer as that doesn't get you very far. But if you spat out these kind of athletes at the rate the U.S. does (due to factors like diet, economic prosperity and sheer numbers to go with it as well as many other factors), a U.S. in which a greater percentage of this pool stuck with Soccer a greater percentage would be high caliber players. Not all of them would, most of them wouldn't be. But _more_ would be, and I think that's the point. That's also why sports like Nordic Skiing aren't really the issue, since they don't contribute to the situation.
Well, again. What makes you think that ANY of these guys would be any better than Claudio Reyna? Sheer athleticism? Yeah, right. IF these people had tried to play soccer professionally, they would've faced the EXACT same obstacles faced by our current international players -- relative lack of competition, lack of decent coaching, and absence of a soccer culture that makes it a part of the daily fabric of someone's life. And these are the factors that shaped their success in the NFL or MLB. Shane Walton? Yeah, we've had a ton of great players come from Notre Dame's storied soccer program. Gee, we'll never recover from that loss. I mean, this proves my point. Here's a decent soccer player who will probably go on to have a great NFL career, but who wouldn't have made any sort of impact on the national team, and who likely wouldn't have had much of an impact on MLS, even. If this is the sort of athlete we're losing, we'll be just fine.