Every now and then (fairly quite often actually - look at Bill Simmons thread). a debate pops up about transferrability of athletics from other major American sports to soccer. There's always a bunch of posters saying that it doesn't matter that best athletes in U.S. don't go into soccer, because there's no reason while terrell Owens or Kobe Bryant or Alex Rodriguez would be great soccer players. And, while I agree that not every one of them woudl make a world-class soccer player, it's silly to believe that none of them would. Think of it as a bell curve. And, sure for every Lionel Messi and Peter Crouch, which are at the tail ends of the curve, you typical soccer star is Steven Gerrard or Anriy Shevchenko - i.e. 6'0" (183 cms) and 180 lbs (~82 kgs). That's more or less the same for most hockey players, baseball players, and a lot of football player positions (e.g. cornerback), as well as basketball PGs. I guarantee you if most of those 6'0"-180 went to soccer, we would have quite a few more star players. Noit every one of them would be a superstar, sure there's more to sport than athletics - talent, skill, mental fortitude, etc. But, there's a reason that most porfessional athletes are multi-sport stars in high school, and quite a few play more than one sport in college. Because basic athleticsim and hand/foot-eye coordination is transferrable from one sport to another, at least on a certain percentage level. What do you think?
without a doubt this has to have some truth to it.....I was just saying on a different thread that at the age of ten in Texas the boys all (at least in the Dallas burbs) go from soccer to football..I was told that by a mother of a ten year old who is sticking with soccer and taking sh*t for it by his classmates she also told me they will have to combine the 10-11 year olds so they can have a full team....I guess that begs the question would soccer talent already have been seen and plucked out to a select team or are some of these kids the ones that will go on to be football stars instead of continuing in footy and becoming stars there?
and how many hours a day are these kids playing soccer/praticing in the street or basement outside of the usual saturday morning gameday? 0 or maybe an hour if lucky?. Leonil Messi at 6 was already practicing/playing longer than your typical 13 Year old soccer players do in the US. Soccer is a different animal, if you want to be the best in the world............than your already practicing/playing long periods in the streets or in the basements since the age of 6. Remember immense Athletic ability is a bonus in the game of soccer for that individual *only if he has the skill,touch and tactical understanding to play the game. and your not getting that immense World Class touch unless you have been playing/practing all day since you were 5.
This is exactly the kind of post that drives me bonkers. Look, every superstar athlete plays some sport day and night since they are 6 years old. You don't think Allen Iverson was playing basketball till he dropped since he was a toddler? What if he was playing soccer at the same rate? Skill is definitely a requirement. But once again, think of percentages. If all of those major sport athletes were playing soccer since they were 5 - you don't think a certain % of them would develop sublime first touch? And going back to Messi - he's an aberration. An outlier. Majority of soccer players are at the upper percentiles of speed, proprtional size/strength, stamina, hand/foot-eye coordination and balance. That's athleticism
The poster of the thread wasn't talking about Messi....he's talking about guys like Gerrard, Drogba, Sheva, Lamps, Essien....the 6-0" 6-2" 170-190 lbl athletic type guys who in Texas would have gotten shuttled into american football.....your Messi, Deco, and Pirlos...that's a different problem that goes to competition at all levels.... a little 5 year old kid praticising all the time as A&F said... playing all the time, against older kids learning to "outsmart them" with his feet as opposed to just athletic ability, where that happens in the US I don't know....
1) Because your letting the "America has the best athletes, because we are A super-race" thought get in the way of your thinking. 2) really, every superstar player. This is America half the supers-star athletes dont start playing their sport daily until they are 12.
No he's not. You're projecting. All he's saying is that the debate on this has gotten way too polarized, which is a decent point. It's true that many of our top athletes would not automatically have been great at soccer because the athletic requirements for each sport are somewhat different. But that doesn't mean that there's NO overlap, which is what the OP is saying. Surely some of our top baseball players, just for example, could have been great soccer players had they focused on that sport at a young age instead.
Of course if more of the US population played soccer as its first sport you'd produce more decent soccer players. It is also fair to say that people who are really good at one sport tend to be much better than average at other sports. By sheer demographics the US is going to have a lot more 6ft tall, strong atheletes than almost any other country in the world. This doesn't mean they'll all turn into great soccer players but if they did in the same proportion to their equivilants in Europe the US would have a great team. What I find does tend to upset and unbalance these debates is when people start to say, or even hint at, things like...Player X from NFL can run a 40 yard dash in Y seconds - imagine him dominating soccer!!!1ZOMG.....or Player Y from the NBA is 7ft tall - imagine him playing soccer.
Finally. A great way to boil down what I'm trying to say. A quick 40 yard NFL runner does not make a great soccer player. But if you have 10 quick 40 yard runners, chances are 1 or 2 of them could probably become very good soccer players. With the population of the country at 300 million, and overall sports coaching on a very decent level (I'm not going to start debating which country has better coaching, but suffice to say that U.S. closer to the top than the bottom, worldwide), we could probably scrape together a few world class players. Finally, as far U.S. athletes not playing sports every day till 12 - you're dead wrong. As in every other country, a disproportionate amount of world class athletes come from poorer neighborhoods. Having grown in south Brooklyn - trust me - kids play sports all the time since they're very little. By the time Marbury was 12, he already had man yyears of playing basketball every single day.
Baseball? I can understand Basketball kids at these positions (PG,SG,SF) and Football(RB,WR,CB,Safety,QB).becoming good at soccer....................but baseball players? You mean the sport where its best players became the best over-night because they took the most steroids. im not buying that one. im trying to figure out which top baseball players had not taken steroids to improve their game big-time, and its taken a while to think about it when it shouldent. In my high school, the best baseball player by far, was terrible at soccer when we played for Recess in the grades 3-8. He did have a crazy arm and powerful swing for baseball........but on the soccer field he was clueless and looked like a headless chicken.
Sure, baseball players took steroids. but, without steroids, they would still be best baseball players, on a relative basis (assuming they all took it). Once again, providing one example of one guy isn't a very powerful argument. There are plenty of exmaples where top U.S. baseball players were also good soccer players (Nomar Garciaparra), or football players (Deion Sanders, Bo Jackson). It's not one-for-one, but clearly athletic ball sports do have a lot in common - and there will be considerable overlap at high school, or even college, level. Beyond that - it's hard to sustain because you really do have to devote yourself solely to one sport to be great. Btw, vice-versa, both Tim Howard and Brad Friedel were terrific basketball players, all-state in New Jersey and Ohio, if I'm not mistaken. Hell, even Jay Heaps played basketball for Duke - no small feat.
My son played on a U9 and U10 soccer team with a kid who is now a Top 100 HS shooting guard -- major D1 recruit, naturally. The notion that this type of basketball athlete would dominate the soccer world is hilarious. This kid was actually pretty good on the ball, since along with hoops he had been raised on soccer. But he was much too awkward and clumsy. Basketball players give up a LOT of agility in exchange for the height. Yeah yeah they're agile for 6' 4" or whatever, but they're dorks compared to a quick and agile 5' 9" guy. My son's HS soccer team has a kid who ran an 11.1 in the 100 meters as a freshman -- that's a national level time for a frosh, and quite fast even for a senior. Showing up to Varsity soccer tryouts as an incoming soph this year, he was just another of the quicker players on the squad when they ran 40 yard races. Finished comfortably behind the team's truly fast guy, in a pack with 4-5 other kids who are each trying to make a claim for being the #2 fastest players. I have no doubt that his HS soccer team could dust most HS basketball teams in a sprint relay. Friend of mine has a guy who is 6' 2" and who has run a 10.5 100 meters on his son's club soccer team. There's a lot of mythology out there about the superiority of the Big Three sports athletes, and the inferiority of U.S. soccer athletes.
I don't think it's about mythology. No one is saying that woirld's top basketball players are better athetes than world's top soccer players. By the same token, best athletes in this country do often choose other sports. Let's think differently - from another angle. Let's say there's a kid in a poor neighboirhood with a body that's perfectly designed for soccer. Yet, b/c he grew up around basketball - he'll be trying his best to make it in basketball. And will not make it to the big leagues, b/c his body is not best designed for basketball. Meanwhile, he could have been a world class soccer player, if he was playing street ball since he was little.
Walk your office hallway, asking that question, and see what response you get. Unless you work with a bunch of foreigners, of course.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Michael Jordan may be the greatest example ever of the fact that athletic talent is not necessarily transferable from one sport to another. He was probably the greatest basketball player of all time, but he was a dismal failure as a minor-league baseball player.
Ok, let me correct myself. No one on this thread is saying that. And, btw, my office is not filled with foreigners by any stretch of imagination, but respect for athleticism in soccer has grown ten-fold since 2006 World Cup.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBtQJf0sxtc"]YouTube - Patrick Vieira - Legend[/ame] 6'4" 180 Untouchable.
Ditto for Messi at 5' 6", but I don't hear anybody arguing that if we just got more 5' 6" guys into the game, nobody else would be able to compete. The basketballer fetish, on the other hand, is alive and well. Plenty of people even on bigsoccer.com willing to argue that a bunch of NBA guys trained from birth on soccer, would be the World Cup Dream Team.
I don't think you guys realise just how many people don't make it in the game... There are literally millions of good players out there, population has nothing to do with it, nor does participation levels. Coaching and getting a style is what has to do with it. Look at Africa millions play the game but the infrastructure isn't their to produce a diverse array of players (they seem to be a variation of the same style, athletic skillful) or a football style (which helps the national team), in basketball, gridiron and baseball you have the coaching to get the percieved best out of the players to suit the job they need to do, in football you haven't had that yet, and that takes generations. Every successful country has gone through their tactical epiphany (more than one in many cases) but they have never done so by isolating themselves and not using outside ideas and help in developing ideas and an identity. Until you do that I reckon the states will be like Africa... therefore the focus shouldn't be on athletic ability but building an intelligent coaching base and a football framework to work towards Oh and foot/eye and hand/eye coordination are completely different!
If United States can produce as many world class players as Africa, I would be quite happy. Populatoin of Africa is only double of United States, so if we can even get 1/2 of world-class players, I would be happy.
Yeah but an all-african team wouldn't be that great, it would be very quick and physical, but extremely one dimensional imho. It's the reason why I think it will take luck for an african team to win the world cup anytime soon, they just don't produce thoughtful players anymore they produce players to fill specific rolls in Europe, no more jay-jay okochas and kanus!