What if our greatest athletes played soccer?

Heres the answer: it would lose.

Look at basketball. USA has often gotten thrashed at the olympics by lesser yet better teams.

Look at baseball. Inspite of a multi-million dollar MLB franchise and all the Yankees, Red Sox, drama … USA got diddly squat at the baseball world cup. It got booted and didnt even make the playoff stages.

Check it out here (caution: the site is content heavy):
http://ww2.worldbaseballclassic.com/2006/index.jsp

Next time someone comes up and says … “oh we’d win the world cup if we really took some interest” … you should know which end they’re talking from.

Winning a world cup in any sport isnt that easy.

Posted from  United States

the current US team would smack it around, let alone any other teams. All sports require specialized talents and skills that take years fo training. But aside from that people have NO idea of the fitness required at the top level of soccer. The average player runs over 12 miles in 90 minutes while concentrating on the ball 100% and kicking, dribbling, tackling, etc etc. There was a fitness competition when I was growing up in the UK that was really tough and had people on it from all kinds of sports. There was only one episode ever (over at least 5 years) that was ever won by someone other than a footballer (soccer player). The winner that time – Daley Thompson, Olympic Decathlon Gold medal winner – who coincidentally is a good enough soccer player that he could have played in the (then) second division professionally.

So no – roll on the floor laughing. What kind of person thinks Kevin Gernett would be a better keeper than Keller?
Roy Williams, Brian Urlacher, Joey Porter, Troy Polamalu? Let’s see them keep up with Messi or Owen or Henry or Ronaldinho over a five minute period. Remember – yhou aren’t allowed to stop and rest…

Posted from  United States

Razzle, the US basketball team has not often been thrashed in olympic basketball. They’ve lost 4 games in about 50 years and have won every single gold medal with the exception of two. And after the olympics in Greece I will guarantee victory in the next olympics and many more to come. They haven’t even been sending their best players since the first dream team.

I agree that professional athletes would not necesarily translate into good soccer players, especially some of the people on the above list of basketball and American football players, but the point is that the great majority of the top athletes in America do not play soccer and it would be interesting to see what would happen if the opposite were true.

Posted from  United States

The suggestion is simply insulting. The implication is that if they had these athletes playing that they would be better than what we have now. Well here is the finger to them.

Posted from  United States

I agree with Seamus, you guys are missing the point.
The idea/premus is, if the US had a culture of playing street soccer from very a very young age and it held the same prestige and glory that Football, Basketball and Baseball held, then that would mean that the talent pool would be 200 million plus athlete.
Now from that big a pool, don’t you think you would be able to find some increidibly skilled and talented players?? That’s the point.
The same would apply to a nation such as India. Right now they are a non entity when it comes to soccer but if they were soccer crazy like Brazilians don’t you think with a population base of over 1 billion that they could develope a pretty good team? I think they could.

Posted from  Canada

What if? belongs in FairyLand. What if this, what if that, really! Let’s talk about reality, not dreams that don’t come true.

Posted from  Australia

I think you guys are missing the point. If these people grew up playing soccer and developed as they did athletically would they be better players than the ones we have? Is Steve Smith a better “athlete” than Claudio Reyna? The answer is yes in many ways. This is just a goofy thought experiment because none of these non-soccer athletes has ever shown prowess with their feet which seems to be overlooked when assessing soccer players. I think it is more of an accomplishment for David Beckham to hit o pinpoint 60 yard cross using his feet than for Peyton Manning to hit a 60 yard bomb using his arm.

But I do think Garnett would be an interesting keeper. He’s obviously good with his hands and is 7 feet tall! But the real question is can he get down and horizontal?

Posted from  United States

Does anyone else see a resemblance between Troy Polamalu and Juan Pablo Sorin?

By itself, it would not probably change much, if anything. Lack of athleticism is not a problem for our squad. Relative lack of creativity in the middle (improving) and absence of world-quality strikers (improving) are still problems. Those problems aren’t going to be automatically solved by dressing up the likes of Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade in soccer uniforms.

The more interesting question is: What if we really paid more interest to soccer (as a nation)? Would we improve? Would we win the Cup in 4-8 years.

In my HO, the answer to first question is yes. If the focus of the nation and the advertising / owner $$ were directed solely or primarily to soccer, we would have a better national team and a better level of play in the MLS. We could afford better coaches not only at the club level, but also at the youth-soccer level (that is the grass-root way to get better in the long-term). Our league could afford better players, which would spark even more interest in the game, which would in turn cause more kids to try soccer. The list could go on.

But would we automatically win the Cup? I don’t know and I would not be too sure. Many countries have a very rich soccer tradition, yet there are only 7 nations that won the whole thing. Some of these countries are as big as the U.S if not bigger. Think of the former Soviet Union, with 280 mill people in its heyday, soccer being the favorite game, and a very rich football tradition going back to the early 20th century. Best finish – loss in third-place match to Eusebio’s Portugal in 66.

Posted from  United States

I am from the UK and although i do think it is an interesting question the answer is not that simple. Firstly a bigger population will not guarantee anything. Nigeria has over 500mil and are soccer mad and only in the last decade shown any promise. Also a number of factors will have a significant effect such as diet will play a part. The average american is on the whole larger than the rest of us, which in football is a major disadvantage (although good for American Football). That said the most important factor would be the personality of USA football. For instance the Italians are defencive, brazilians flambouyant, Germans mentally tough and efficient (a bit like there engineering), english die hard etc.
As yet i am not sure what personality is or could be atributed to the USA. Therein lies the key as that is what the kids learning to play will adopt and attempt to assimilate into there game.

Posted from  United States

To my best recollection, when the “Super stars” competition started on TV in USA. Kyle Rote, Jr. ( Kyle Rote Sr.’s son) won the first three or someting like that. His sport soccer woth Dallas of the NASL. Look it up there it is head to head. Also there is no comparison to the fitness/skill required of a pro soccer player This is not 15 minutes ( or less ) and it is Miller Time.

Posted from  United States

Joe – you’re right on that one about basketball.

It seems like we’re all heading to the same conclusion here (which is an anomaly!) … theres no guarantee of USA being the “best” if it had its today’s athletes trained in soccer from day one.

Now if the entire USA devoted itself to soccer from an early age … in that fairyland anything is possible. USA then could indeed have been champs.

Posted from  United States

The only sure thing we can say about this is that if guys like Bryant and Garnett chose to play soccer they may be much more poor now LOL

I think the point is an interesting one but the answer lies in the athletes chosen. These football and basketball players have phyical attributes which make them particularly proficient at the specific sports they play. Although some players would be able to make the transition (hypothetically). I think the crux of their success would lie in whether or not they would have the proper balance of speed, stamina, coordination etc. that goes into making a great soccer player. Yes, it is true that the USA does not have a player that has emerged as a force in World Cup level competition but what is more important is that the team as a whole has not as yet developed the “soccer inteligence” that some of the better countries have. Countries whose players are the beneficiaries of not only many generations of soccer knowledge but also a sensitivity to the art of the game will always be at the advantage.

Posted from  United States

Great point Zero. From the top 11 from above i would say no NFL LBs would make make it. Too much extra bulk. I would say NFL skill position players and NBA (guards) players would be the best. And one player missing from the list above is allen iverson.. what a soccer player he could have been…

Posted from  United States

What makes great sports teams? Great athletes. Great athletes can be tuned to many sports. It’s their culture that tunes them to their specific sport. America has the greatest athletes. (See Olympic games as indication of countrys raw athleticism). So we have the athletes… we just need the culture..

Posted from  United States

What if the same resources and organizations behind our greatest athletes were pointed at soccer? Isn’t that the real question?

RCTID

Posted from  United States

That FoxSoccer article really annoyed me. The basic point is a good (though painfully obvious) one: if soccer were America’s first choice sport, our team would be better. But that’s not primarily because we’re losing all our good athletes to football and basketball.

As a lot of other people have pointed out, the FoxSoccer article was naive (or deliberately misleading) about the abilities that soccer requires. Each sport makes pretty unique demands from its athletes, and it’s not just learned skills but also body type. The guys who excel at football and basketball aren’t necessarily the guys who would excel at soccer. A lot of basketball players would be too tall and a lot of football players too big and slow-twitchy. (Though if you trained the people who become point guards, running backs, and wide receivers, you’d probably do pretty well.)

If soccer were our national sport, we would be a powerhouse. But not because Brian Urlacher would play for us (Michael Vick would be nice) but because we’d get every kid in the country thinking of it as a potential profession rather than as an afterschool activity. And then the ones suited to play the game at a high level would keep playing. After that, well, we’re a rich, stable, big country that values sports more than, say, being able to find Louisiana or Iraq on a map. We’d produce superstars.

Minor note: The Australian national sports program is incredibly sophististicated in its recruitment. It goes around to schools doing biometrics on kids, suggesting to them which sports they might excel at. This is partly why Australia, a nation with less than a tenth of the US’s population, does so well in so many sports. If we were to do something like that (we never will), we might keep more kids interested in soccer rather than thinking that they’re too short or skinny for professional sports.

I think the article was harmless but I do think there is a small point to it thats good. Gooch is an insane athlete whose combo of size and speed is unique. In the us though there are a ton of athletes like gooch in the past who’ve always chosen another sport but I think times are changing and better athletes are starting to migrate towards soccer.

What does brian urlacher have on gooch? strength, besides that speed, agility, leaping ability all the other measureables would probably go in goochs favor. What guys like this article are going to see in the next ten years is that some of the best athletes in the us do play soccer.

Posted from  United States

This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever seen.

Posted from  United States

Lads, several of y’all are missing the point as has been said before.

Of course, any selection of atheletes from other sports would be utterly annihalated by the US national side. They would be mauled by a MLS side too, by any team of professional players, not to mention a competitive international team like the US.

The point being made is not that these guys would be any good but rather the potential atheletes America loses to its other, homegrown,internationally irrelavent sports.

The US team is as fit as any other international side, but it is noticeably short on truly impressive atheletes.And size. A couple of tall guys, a couple of fast guys, but nobody with exceptional physical attributes. All of those guys are playing those other sports.

I tend to imagine that at a certain age, the great physical specimens among young american kids, get snapped up by the big American sports. I could be wrong, but that would seem to explain why the country who clears up at the olympic games every time have, in general,such weedy, physically unremarkable footballers.

Its a shame, because the fact is only football matters. All other sports are just games. The standing of a country in the eyes of the world is often connected to how its football team peform. Football is the one unifying cultural force in the world, from Honduras to Tibet, from Sweden to the Congo, and its unfortunate that the US channels its best atheletes into sports which are of supreme indifference to the rest of the planet.

Oops, Im close to embarking onto a geopolitical rant about American insularity heh. Suffice to say, although talent is more important than physical attributes, its unlikely for Americas best young atheletes to end up playing ball for their national team. And its a shame.

I believe thats the point he was trying to make.

Cheers

Posted from  United Kingdom

Yes America has a long way to go in soccer but we are getting better. On the flip side if you switched it around and had a world cup in American style football, nobody would come close to us, nobody. It is like comparing apples and oranges, you can’t. You keep your football and I’ll stick to my football.

Posted from  United States