Don't know if anyone caught this, http://espn.go.com/page2/s/wiley/020919.html but it is apropos to this thread and is a good read. [Mod's edit: fixed link.]
... although a player like Shaq wouldn't have much of a problem generating a powerful swing. IMO, the relative lack of hitters above 6'4 comes from two sources: 1) Very few men are over 6'4. 2) Generally, the ones that tall play other sports. It's remarkable how many big guys can go from being part-time baseball players to major leaguers ... Winfield, 6'5 Frank Thomas, 6'5 Drew Henson, and even 6'7 Ryan Minor. To me, this suggests that plenty of tall guys could make it in baseball if that were their goal.
With all due respect, Niall Quinn's stature in soccer is not and never was anywhere near Hakeem Olajuwon's stature in basketball. Also, I have a very hard time believing he didn't play soccer at all when he was growing up...
Maybe, but I think it's the chicken and egg problem -- do you choose because you WANT something else, or choose because, well, you HAVE to? Frank Thomas, despite his struggles this year, is the exception rather than the rule, but he has a very compact swing and outstanding hand-eye coordination. Again, I stand by my assertion that it is simply tougher for tall guys with long arms to swing a baseball bat with the proper form. Not impossible, just difficult.
2 things are obvious. 1 - of course soccer in the US looses athletes to other sports, due to low status, lower financial awards and other sociological factors. 2 - the giant sized athletes that get mentioned on these boards do not have the body type to be good soccer players. I could care less if we loose guys like Jordan or Shaq to basketball. However, I would like to see what things would look like if some of the smaller point gaurds who get into the NBA had played soccer instead of basketball.
There is no question that if soccer were the most popular professional sport, our team would be made up of better athletes, strictly statistically speaking. They would represent a much more diverse sociological area. Most of our college and pro players come from suburbia, where the main emphasis is usually on schooling. While kids in these areas probably dream of playing pro soccer these days, there are too many other distractions in their lives to seriously consider it. When you factor in the low payoff, it becomes even more difficult to seriously pursue. There are kids who do it, but almost never in the same way that Canadien hockey players or inner-city basketball players do. At least those kids can expect some financial rewards, and in many cases it is their only real opportunity at big money. College scholarships are an attractive reward, but college is oft considered a dead end for soccer players, and it is hard to maintain a serious level of commitment when you are surrounded by partying and studying, while the NCAA puts restrictions on what kind of soccer you can play. The fact that there is a relatively small but growing number of european players in the NBA is a testament to the fact that in a European development system, basketball, soccer, whatever, whereby a player is pretty much pro by 12 or 13 and receives specific, concentrated training, an athlete can raise himself above the general level of play surrounding himself to compete at the highest level in the world. Sure we have some Americans playing soccer in Europe, but compared to the total numbers of soccer players that we have here (a whole lot), the proportion ends up being really low. Plus, none of them could be considered all-stars, except maybe Keller. Most of these players were exceptional in that they too made a SERIOUS decision early on to play pro soccer. We have been playing soccer here in the US for a long time, and development has been made slowly. The fact that we are a wealthy country abounding with lucrative career possibilities outside of sports, and that soccer has yet to really catch on professionally here...I can still see way more Premier League or Bundesliga games than MLS on TV... makes it hard to imagine that we will make SIGNIFICANT increases until the number of really good athletes that play soccer their whole lives increases drastically... and we all know who I am talking about. If every baseball, football, basketball, and track athlete considered playing soccer before any of these at an early age at the same intensity that they exhibited in playing their true sport, the United States would be a world power, irregardless of coaching techniques. If soccer was on TV, kids would learn how to play. The reality is that the pool of athletes in America is growing slowly but steadily, as is the level of training available, and the availability of good soccer on TV. It is also becoming much more of a reality to actually play soccer professonally and also make a decent living, although these to a lesser degree. The level of youth soccer has proceeded tremendously over the last ten years I would argue, much in part to WC '94. As more and more kids are born with soccer playing parents, the number of second-generation pros will increase accordingly. This is an issue oft skirted, but I would be willing to bet that worldwide, the percentage of pro soccer players who have it in the family is really high. All in all, it would be nice to have someone with the athletic ability of an Allen Iverson or Marshall Faulk, who would undoubtably make excellent players had they been steeped in soccer, but we cannot really expect that to happen to a large degree. Nobody can say exactly why Maradonna was so good, he just was and took the opportunity to play soccer. In my mind it is all a game of probability, as it takes much more than either good coaching or athleticism to make a world class player. Our chances of producing them are still much lower than countries like Brazil, Spain or England. We might be able to field eleven guys who can compete internationally, but we can't field a professional league at a level even close to that. In another fifty years...who knows. The US certainly has more potential to improve than any other country.
Here's the problem I see in your line of reasoning: As of 15 years ago, somebody could have argued that a pitcher could never be exceptionally tall. Once a pitcher was over 6'6, it became too difficult to learn a proper wind-up. Up until then, there hadn't been successful pitchers who were taller. However, Randy Johnson blew that possible myth away. Similarly, Thomas, McGwire, Winfield, Parker, etc. also blow away your claim that hitters can't be over 6'4. Baseball's greatest hitters have often been exceptionally tall for their eras, from Ty Cobb (6'1) to Babe Ruth (6'2) to Ted Williams (6'3). As the American people have gotten taller, so have the best hitters. There's no reason to think that the trend has stopped.
There are always exceptions to every rule, the point still is that it is more difficult for tall (6'4", 6'5" and up or whatever your definition of "tall" is) to hit a baseball due to mechanics. With a longer swing, there is more room for error. Another point to remember, to get the taller guys out, you pitch them inside to "jam" them and don't let them get there arms extended. Due to the proliferation of aluminum bats and other factors, pitchers generally don't establish themselves inside, which allows the taller guys to get those arms extended. Those pitchers that do pitch inside: Clemens, Martinez, Schilling, Johnson, etc. are typically among the league leaders year after year. (BTW, before the Big Unit, there was JR Richard, who was fearsome at 6'8"). Regarding the point about getting better athletes to play soccer: as it's been said ad nauseam, it's not happening any time soon. So, it seems pretty simple to me, if you can't rely on sheer athleticism, you need to maximize the talent of the players you do have through a focus on skill development. Without strong fundamentals as a building block, a player can't maximize his potential. That's the essential point from Karl's original post and it's as applicable to soccer as it is to hoops. The question is how we can better emphasize skill development within our current youth development "structure", such that it is.
Your theories about height are plausible, but they doesn't match up with the empirical evidence. Most of the best hitters have always been tall. Some have been very tall. Clearly, there's something else going on.
Some have been tall, but not THAT tall. In other words, 6'5" is very much the exception, not the rule. Tall pitchers have been successful because they can get a longer stride to the plate, and can generate catapult like force with their arm motion. The longer your arms, the better. And taller people, as a rule, have longer arms. Walter Johnson, who pitched before the war (The FIRST world war) had unbelieveably long arms. See Robert Creamer's book on the legends of baseball. Most sophisticated soccer coaches today are very attuned to the issue of "body type." For example, ask a soccer coach today, what's better? Small feet or large feet? So what do you see today, generally? Strikers who are smallish and fast, yet still strong (a Michael Owen, Schevchenko, Wolff type) ; wingers who are smallish and fast, who are slightly less strong than forwards (a Giggs, Beasley type); target men who are tall, and can range from wiry to filled out (a Mark Viduka/Christian Vieri type) ; midfielders who are average sized but as a rule not more than 160lbs (a Reyna, Beckham type); defenders who are generally in the 6 foot range but not much more than 6'3" or so (a Ferdinand/Pope/Hierro type). Then you've got they hybrids, like Roberto Carlos who is a kind of winger/defender type. That's not to say that there won't be exceptions to this kind of "type casting", but the fact is that coaches do think this way, and slot players into positions and roles according to body type. It happens all the time.
Perhaps he played Gaelic football (wasn't he actually raised in Ireland,as opposed to many Eire players?) One quick point on athletes from other sports.We have no idea which players from other sports could make an impact in soccer because no current American pro sport puts as much demand on aerobic fitness as soccer.Application of skills throughout the 90 minutes depends on a high fitness level.
It bears mentioning that part of this reason for the fundamental coaching and development both sports appear to have over the u.s. that there are far more rules and regulations concerning youth development over here in the states. NCAA players have a mandated number of hours they can practice as do high school players. There are not live in academies where they essentially train year around. Some of those european hoops players are playing and training like professionals from age 15, while U.S. kids are sitting in class. I'm not advocating athletics over education in any way, but this would lend credence to the level of skill development between the two.
Sure, it's the exception to be that tall. However, being that tall is still an advantage. Look at the Top 25 hitters of the 90s, and you'll quickly find a few 6'5 guys (www.thebaseballpage.com has a Top 25 that includes #2 McGwire, #3 Thomas, and #19 Olerud). Now, take a random sample of 250 men born between 1960 and 1975. Even in a group that big, you're unlikely to find three guys who are over 6'4.
This is absolutely correct, and it happens in every sport. I guess the question is, can and will these type casting decisions change? Take baseball again - at one time the sport did not have "closers" and "set up men." Relief pitchers were a sorry lot who only came in when the starting pitcher was having a bad day or got injured (thus the name "relief"). Starters were expected to go 9 (or 10 or 12). But today we have a whole system built around the end of game pitchers. Specialists evolved where there were none before. The same is true of soccer. We speak now of the #10 shirt as the central attacking midfielder, but it's very number suggests that that position was once the center forward, with different jobs and certainly a different body type. Where will the next generation of specialists develop and what will their body types be? That is the question that interests me. I already see a movement towards more athletic, faster and larger outside backs, of which our own Tony Sanneh is one. I see his body type supplanting the Lizarazu body type at those positions once the athletes are found to do it. I also suspect that there will eventually be a movement towards more sturdy central midfielders, seeing how injuries have taken such a toll on that position in recent years. Again, we are short on sturdy players with the skills to play the position at present, but it seems an inevitable change. And following on the heels of that change will be a move towards larger defensive midfielders (this would mirror the move toward larger wide receivers in football and the subsequent move toward larger cornerbacks which is still ongoing). These changes may never happen because the athletes may never be found, or because some new system comes along which changes everything, forcing a paradigm shift in the entire lineup, like the Dutch Total Football of the 70's. But we shall see. It will be interesting one way or the other.