Originally posted by Mr. Cam Modern weight training can enhance the performance of ANY football-soccer player. A Question for you Bauser, how many Professional European Football-Soccer clubs use weight training as a method to increase on-field performance? Of course soccerplayers do weight training. But not to the extent that it becomes a burden on their game. They are not going to build bulky upper bodies like in weightlifting or other powersports just so they can win a shoulder/shoulder duel on the field. Although at WC 02 Zidane looked very Joe Average! That's because Zidane got injured in the last warm-up match before the World Cup and missed the first two games. He was thrown in half fit against Denmark in the last game trying to turn around things for France, but with no result. Bauser, what tournament do you consider of greater importance; FIFA’s U-20 World Youth Championship or the Olympic Gold Medal in football-soccer? They are both really youth tournaments, but an Olympic gold medal should weigh heavier. Some overaged players (+23 yrs) take part in the Olympics. Finally, give your assessment and impressions of the U.S.A.'s performance in WC 02 on a scale of 0 to 100. With 0 representing the French and 100 representing the Brazilians. If France was 0, what was Saudi Arabia? I can't give out grading on such a large scale. The US team did very well, but it could have ended badly when they lost the only game they were truly favourites to win (Poland). It's easier to be the underdog than the favourite. I look forward to 2006. Also, should the USA advance to the quarter or semi-finals in Germany, will you and Europeans in general take the USA seriously? People take the US team seriously. There have been published a lot of positive articles prior and after the WC about the US team. The negative ones always speak louder though and therefore are those that get highlighted. That's how people are. Give me your prediction on what will have to happen first to enable a U.S. World Cup victory. The MLS joins the EPL, La Liga, and Serie A in quality of play. The U.S. wins FIFA’s U-20 World Youth Championship or the U.S. wins an Olympic Gold Medal in football-soccer? A strong domestic league is always an advantage, but it would be great to have a few players also in the best European leagues to get a taste of that level playing against players you will face in a World Cup. The US could win a World Cup regardless of success in U20 and Olympic tournaments. Those tournaments never tell the true strength. African teams have won the last two Olympic tournaments in the same timeframe as their countries have stalled in development compared to the world elite.
ur pretty stupid...to say it would take 6 months to get the skills to learn how to catch a pass and run routes is amazingly dumb. many talented kids will join a high school team without previously ever playing football and end up starting for the varsity team.
And aren't any good. Just because football coaches _think_ they can teach somebody to be a wide receiver in an offseason, doesn't mean they can. It's one of the big gripes you hear in the NFL is that the teams overcommit to "athletes" and let "football players" fall through the cracks. The famous story about the Chicago Bears cutting the best receiver they had (Tom Waddell) 6 or 7 times before they finally gave him a shot due to injuries and found out how good he was. Most of the "track star becomes football player" (usually at Wide Receiver or Kick Returner) experiments have been fairly abysmal failures as they can't catch, can't run routes, can't block downfield, can't come back to the play when the QB scrambles. Basically the one play they run is run as fast as you can and try and get behind the DBs. Then hope you catch it.
every1 says athleticism won't be enough to make some1 a good player, but i dont think any1 said it would. most of these athletes have something called talent and for the great athletes talent can easily transfer over into other sports. no one can jump from one sport to another and be good, but thats not what the original post was about. i am sure people such as michael vick, edgar davids, thierry henry, or whoever could change sports with time to learn the sport. for everyone talking here about oh they could never be good, i am sure given...lets say 4-6 good months of dedicated training most of them would be better than you. and for every1 stop taking this so seriously, it was a nice, fun thread. stop saying oh there are too many if's involved to figure it out, didnt the original poster say what IF so and so happend, its for fun...
you are definitely right about the track to football conversions. but the thing is you dont have to be just talented or just athletic, you can be BOTH. imagine that. for people that are talented learning proper blocking, route running, and catching isn't all that difficult, atleast at a high school level. many people have jumped into sports and succeeded.
Only one legit track star made the transition As far as I can remember, the only track superstar who was able to translate his speed to the football field and make it successfully at the NFL level was Bob Hayes. There have been many others who have tried, but the only player who proved to be nearly as successful on the football field as he was on the track was Hayes. Other than him, all the other guys were flops (Willie Gault was mediocre at best, a recent Gold medal relay winner has been a wash, and R. Neamiah (Spelling?) stank out loud as well) or mediocre at best. An interesting fact is that noone really ever came close to handling Darrell Green at the NFL fastest man competitions in the eighties and early nineties, and he never trained for the olympics (Supposedly his best forty time was somewhere in the 4.10 area).
Trivia question: who was the first US player ever to be named to the Best XI of a FIFA championship tournment? And what did he do with the rest of his career? ---- voros is making a lot of great points in this thread. While there's no good evidence that any one player could have made a soccer star (though watching Vick does make one wonder) increasing the overall athletic ability of the applicant pool would have to have an effect, unless one thought athletics was completely and utterly irrelevant, and that's a pretty strained position to take.
Re: Re: Only one legit track star made the transition Jett hasn't exactly rewrote the record books, but he's one of the better ones. Also, wasn't Jett a football player as well at times? I think were talking about guys like Carl Lewis (who briefly flirted with a football career), guys who really are completely new to the sport. Or someone like the infamous Herb Washington. There's a few like Tim Dwight who didn't play _organized_ football until late (like College) but weren't new to the sport either, that were also Track Stars. Some of these guys stop running track for the same reasons they stop playing Soccer. But raw athletic ability doesn't really get you all that far in American Football either. Further than most team sports and further than soccer, and WAY further than Baseball, but still not a great player.
Most of the "track star becomes football player" (usually at Wide Receiver or Kick Returner) experiments have been fairly abysmal failures as they can't catch, can't run routes, can't block downfield, can't come back to the play when the QB scrambles. Basically the one play they run is run as fast as you can and try and get behind the DBs. Then hope you catch it.>>> Reminds me of a favorite story: Renaldo Nehemiah's agent to NFL scout: "You should sign him,he runs a 4.5" Scout: "We have a lot of guys that do that" Agent: "Over hurdles?" When signed he lived up to your post,of course.
Not quite true. Nehemiah could not adapt to the "hitting" that occurs in an NFL game, particularly over the middle. That's want ended his "short" NFL carrer.
They both sucked Cam Ron Brown and James Jett weren't much better than Renaldo. None of the three ever were much better than fourth receivers and if Jett didnt have photographs of Al Davis is a compromising position he would have been gone long ago (in truth though, Al has this obsession with deep passing attacks, which distorts his sense of reason beyond all measure. James Jett has always sucked). Ron Brown from '84-'91 98 Receptions for 1,791-13 TD's Top season: 26-521-2 in 1987 Incidentally Darrell Green whupped his ass in the NFL Fastest Man competition whenever he met up with him. James Jett 256 Receptions for 4,417 and 30 TD's His top season was a middling: 46-804-12 TD year in '97. The 12 TD's were astounding, but a flash in the pan, he'd top 800 yards one more time in his career, but he'd never manage to catch more than he did in that '97 season (46), top that yardage mark, or come within the same hemisphere of that TD mark. He's sucked his entire career with the exception of a TD happy, but yardage and quantity-wanting '97 season. Renaldo Neimiah 82-84 43 Receptions for 754 Yards and 4 TD's. Essentially all these guys have sucked and pretty much all the others as well with the exception of Bob Hayes. Back in the days of 14 game seasons, the late Bob Hayes was a dynamic force in a run happy league. The world class sprinter scored 71 TD's (topping 10 in a 14 game season 5 separate times) caught 371 passes for more than 7,514 yards (topping 885 yards six times, and 1,000 yards twice) and along with Lance Allworth and Charlie Taylor, and Paul Warfield, he helped insure that the days of 15-20 passes thrown in a game were over. But James Jett, and Ron Brown. They stank. Willie Gault would provide a better argument, but he wasn't all that good either (topped 800 yards in a season three times and had four seasons where he scored in at least one out of every three starts), the truth is, speedsters are not great WR's. Great WR's are great WR's. Its a position that requires skill, intelligence, hard work, terrific technique and plenty of dedication to master. Otherwise any old run of the mill speedster would be great as a WR. They aren't, too often speedsters are easy to jam at the line of scrimmage, they are poor route runners, and lack quality catching technique. Jerry Rice and Cris Carter are perhaps the two slowest Pro Bowl caliber Wide Receivers of the modern NFL era (1960's-present). But it doesnt matter because both of them are fanatical workers and trainers who use picture perfect technique with their hands, run the most precise routes imaginable, and have deceptive burst, and a second gear that CB's always tend to under-estimate.