Getting athletes isn't our problem...but I do agree, we are missing out on a lot of players due to how the youth game is structured here, and there are undoubtedly players who lack the size/body type to excel in our big 2 (NFL/NBA) that if they trained soccer seriously from u5 would add depth to the pool. But then they'd just be coached by your average "beep test/want it more/the game is 11 1v1s grabasstic bootball" American coach so it's unclear how much we'd actually gain... The MLS combine finally let's us put to rest the tired "if only our best athletes played soccer" trope... 20 yard shuttle run is an amazing test of speed/quickness NFL combine vs MLS combine shows potential MLS players just as fast as NFL combine results pic.twitter.com/Ko14MXAHDg— Chris Kessell (@THEChrisKessell) January 7, 2019
When I was a student at Millersville University, I went to a soccer game. The other school was just terrible. I had friends on my school's soccer. After the match, I asked my friend what was up with the other team. He said that the baseball and soccer got busted at a party. The baseball team had to play soccer and the soccer team had to play baseball. Ah, memories.
stop with this athlete you do not have athletes even in nfl or nba they could not run continiusly for 10 minutes let aone 120 minutes. and nfl you americans really llike to fetishize those guys like they are something out f this world when they are just b level athlete in regular sports non of nfl players could make rugby team with conditioning they have let alone soccer team with weight or stamina wise. ever watched lukaku when he was 5-10 lb overweight guy was terrible in first touch or anything, these nfl players look intimidting with peds or weight but to play soccer they would be like gootch and what did that guy do in soccer
I take some issue with the premise of that tweet. But first i want to nitpick a bit. A lot of those NFL players are built bigger in order to handle getting hit in football, evidenced by the fact most of the football players have at least 40+ lbs over those soccer players (granted i only looked at a few on each list but regardless). If anything I feel like those soccer players should be faster, not roughly the same (my uninformed opinion mind you) Besides that argument is missing the forest for the trees. Really what people are saying is we don't really have most of the super talented athletes from poor backgrounds who would live breathe and die for the game turning up for soccer. The argument also implies the presumption that our infrastructure and culture would be geared towards that drive of producing great players as well. Currently though it's geared towards american football, basketball and baseball primarily. Obviously good athletes do exist in the sport but probably not one that is obsessed with being the next football star as a kid the same way they want to be the next Lebron or Steph or Jordan or Tom Brady or Jerry Rice or anything like that (at least at remotely the same volume and breadth).
That guy seems to have a pretty obvious anti-American bias however lets be honest there does seem to be this ridiculous belief that somehow Americans are more 'driven' more 'athletic' simply because they're American, which is of course absolute rubbish.
Yeah I agree with you there. The proof is even in these very sports. In baseball a fair amount of the star players these days are from outside the US (Japan, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba, etc). In the NBA a lot of the newer stars are from France and other places as well. There's certainly an 'American Exceptionalism' slant to the argument for sure.
Yeah we assume far too much in our country. In terms of pro athletes, most everyday people have zero idea of what it takes to just get a shot at being a pro, let alone being able to make an actual career out of playing a sport. I would argue that for a large percentage of the pro athletes not just in America, but globally, don't love the game as much as fans do. They all like/love the money they're earning. If all pro athletes loved their game of choice as much as fans, there'd far more Lebron's, Messi's, Ronaldo's, etc. in the games. Further, we often hear retired pros talk about how they can still play the game, and that they still love the game. It's everything that they need to do on non-gamedays that they don't love, and don't miss. We all see the matches/games. It's the other days we don;'t see. The amount of work it takes just to get to the pro level, let alone stick around for more than 2-3 years, nevermind the amount of work it takes to become the very best consistently. If it was easy, there'd be far more pro athletes in this world. That level of drive and focus is just rare, and then having the talent on top of that.
The question assumes that "top athlete" is a blanket term for "be good at any sport, especially soccer." Would Simone Biles be a top midfielder for USWNT? May be. Probably not. It's a silly question to begin with because it's been asked before with such desperation on top of it just being a silly question. It's the same silly thinking when people think Christiano Ronaldo would be a world class high jumper or that Messi would be an Olympic sprinter. Just stop.