Nothing can really be argued here. Great article. I still think the larger point is, even if Allen Iverson selected soccer, he wouldn’t have grown up in the right soccer incubator, so the gains would be minimal. Lamine Yamal isn’t the same player if he grows up in Kentucky. Our best current men’s players in the squad, are the best largely because they grew up in soccer first households or grew up abroad…not because they are better athletes. Culture
Great article. The main issue isn’t, “How do we get our best athletes to play soccer.” It’s the youth sport culture we have in the US. It prioritizes specialization, winning, and enriching coaches.
We have to reverse it: get kids exposed to all kinds of sports, including putting a soccer ball at their feet, ban scoring until a certain age, and prioritize development in the community over large travel clubs.
Yes. Many countries beyond the USA have dudes who are giant and jacked and "twitchy" and would probably make excellent NFL edge rushers. Guess what? Those "great athletes" don't play soccer for those counties' national teams, either. Soccer demands a different sort of athleticism from what most Americans assume the word means. Michael Phelps was a great athlete. Not for soccer.
Really interesting post. I do think you nail it when you mention that this post is focused on the physiology of athletes while the main component in soccer is skill with the ball which helps explain why there's a gap between the US and the top countries.
I still remember after the 94 WC how everyone was saying that would lead to the boom of US soccer and take it to the top.
It may sound weird but is very much a cultural thing, some countries just seem to be more talented at this, just like the US is at other sports regardless of the depth of the talent pool
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I played mid-field in high school and a little bit of club soccer when I was a kid. Mid-fielders arguably do more running in soccer than any other position. I was very comfortable running 5k, 8k, 10k distances as a walk-on collegiate track and cross country runner. The main thing I was missing was the base of miles that i didn’t get because I was busy playing soccer.
I'd be curious where Ultimate lands on the chart. Smaller field than soccer, but the same idea that when you are out there it's a mix of nonstop motion mixed with repetitive sprints.
This is super interesting. I've played soccer thru adulthood and am a big fan of watching and have never thought about the sport this way.
I'll add as well, the players you mentioned (Walcott, Bale, Ronaldo) are all pretty well known for their speed; they'd be among the players I'd first think of as the fastest. To see their elite speed (elite at least in their sport) stacked up against athletes in other sports is pretty striking.
Ya. That’s surprises a lot of folks. I’d expect it more towards the middle. But think about the demands. Repeated 45sec max efforts with a few minutes rest. Recovery is paramount which is an endurance thing.
Plus the greatest hockey player ever was a strong youth 800 runner (Gretzky ran like 158ish in 9th grade I think)
Great article. I think the "What if our best athletes played soccer?" people are missing the point slightly. It seems more likely to me that it's not that Lebron, or Tyreek Hill, or any specific NBA or NFL players would be great soccer players. It's that the athletes that had the potential to be great soccer players ended up playing football or basketball and topped out in HS or college.
It's not "What if our best athletes played soccer?" it's ""What if MORE of our athletes played soccer?"
Just to make a single country comparison, generally speaking, Americans are more invested in youth sports than the British. Youth sports programs are better funded and better attended, and there is more of a social expectation that kids will ‘do sports’ than in the uk.
Soccer is an outlier though. Boys will play soccer at school every lunchtime and breaktime, from as soon as they start school. This is where the raw talent gets developed. I assume other countries are similar.
This is one reason soccer is the world’s most popular sport - the equipment needed is so simple, anyone can play.
Galen Rupp and Mo Farah-- grew up playing soccer. Had a high school classmate who was being scouted by the local professional soccer team. We was super lazy in track but still ran a sub-2 880(!)
Sure, you can make that argument...But again, most of the women's team is essentially middle-distance runners... They aren't the female equivalent of Tyreek Hill.
But yes, soccer being one of the more popular sports for girls to play growing up certainly helps keep the talent in the sport! But the point of this post is it's a different talent than folks expect.
You can reverse the argument: if football was as popular with girls as it is with boys in Brazil or France or Germany, their women team would dominate.
I'm not sure that's really the case any more. The US team is no longer so dominant. They dominated totally at a time when the best European and South American soccer nations simply had very, very little interest in women's soccer. Even a generation ago, girls who played football regularly were relatively rare in England. Girls' football teams were few and the women's game attracted hardly any interest. It wasn't even professional till relatively recently. Now that the likes of Spain, England, Germany and Brazil have thriving women's football scenes, I would imagine that the US will struggle to dominate. They'll still be up there with the best, I think, because women's soccer is a much bigger part of the culture in the US than men's, but nothing like to the extent they were. Incidentally, as an Englishman, I've found it wonderful to see how far the England women's team has come in the past 20 years.
This makes sense to me. There is no need to spring 100 yards, and rarely even 40 in soccer. But as someone else mentions below, there is an explosion element to soccer. I wonder what an elite soccer player's time would be on the NFL's shuttle run. Even that might be a bit long at 20 yards. But Messi is incredibly quick over 5-10 yards and he's impossibly quick while dribbling.
I always thought of soccer as a speed sport. The players are near stationary and the sprinting over and over again throughout the match. So, this does surprise me quite a bit.
Not really. Most positions are in motion nearly all the time, with short bursts of speed. Players generally cover 6 to 8 miles during a match. Forwards are the exception, insofar as they stand around contributing nothing most of the time, then grab the glory.
Nothing can really be argued here. Great article. I still think the larger point is, even if Allen Iverson selected soccer, he wouldn’t have grown up in the right soccer incubator, so the gains would be minimal. Lamine Yamal isn’t the same player if he grows up in Kentucky. Our best current men’s players in the squad, are the best largely because they grew up in soccer first households or grew up abroad…not because they are better athletes. Culture
Great article. The main issue isn’t, “How do we get our best athletes to play soccer.” It’s the youth sport culture we have in the US. It prioritizes specialization, winning, and enriching coaches.
We have to reverse it: get kids exposed to all kinds of sports, including putting a soccer ball at their feet, ban scoring until a certain age, and prioritize development in the community over large travel clubs.
Yes. Many countries beyond the USA have dudes who are giant and jacked and "twitchy" and would probably make excellent NFL edge rushers. Guess what? Those "great athletes" don't play soccer for those counties' national teams, either. Soccer demands a different sort of athleticism from what most Americans assume the word means. Michael Phelps was a great athlete. Not for soccer.
Really interesting post. I do think you nail it when you mention that this post is focused on the physiology of athletes while the main component in soccer is skill with the ball which helps explain why there's a gap between the US and the top countries.
I still remember after the 94 WC how everyone was saying that would lead to the boom of US soccer and take it to the top.
It may sound weird but is very much a cultural thing, some countries just seem to be more talented at this, just like the US is at other sports regardless of the depth of the talent pool
I find this satisfying because it’s affirming about my high school athletic aptitude, ha!
Soccer + 4x400 and 800m runner.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I played mid-field in high school and a little bit of club soccer when I was a kid. Mid-fielders arguably do more running in soccer than any other position. I was very comfortable running 5k, 8k, 10k distances as a walk-on collegiate track and cross country runner. The main thing I was missing was the base of miles that i didn’t get because I was busy playing soccer.
I'd be curious where Ultimate lands on the chart. Smaller field than soccer, but the same idea that when you are out there it's a mix of nonstop motion mixed with repetitive sprints.
This is super interesting. I've played soccer thru adulthood and am a big fan of watching and have never thought about the sport this way.
I'll add as well, the players you mentioned (Walcott, Bale, Ronaldo) are all pretty well known for their speed; they'd be among the players I'd first think of as the fastest. To see their elite speed (elite at least in their sport) stacked up against athletes in other sports is pretty striking.
Slightly unrelated but I’m really surprised to see hockey so heavily skewed towards slow twitch. I’d expect it to be to the right of soccer.
Ya. That’s surprises a lot of folks. I’d expect it more towards the middle. But think about the demands. Repeated 45sec max efforts with a few minutes rest. Recovery is paramount which is an endurance thing.
Plus the greatest hockey player ever was a strong youth 800 runner (Gretzky ran like 158ish in 9th grade I think)
Great article. I think the "What if our best athletes played soccer?" people are missing the point slightly. It seems more likely to me that it's not that Lebron, or Tyreek Hill, or any specific NBA or NFL players would be great soccer players. It's that the athletes that had the potential to be great soccer players ended up playing football or basketball and topped out in HS or college.
It's not "What if our best athletes played soccer?" it's ""What if MORE of our athletes played soccer?"
Just to make a single country comparison, generally speaking, Americans are more invested in youth sports than the British. Youth sports programs are better funded and better attended, and there is more of a social expectation that kids will ‘do sports’ than in the uk.
Soccer is an outlier though. Boys will play soccer at school every lunchtime and breaktime, from as soon as they start school. This is where the raw talent gets developed. I assume other countries are similar.
This is one reason soccer is the world’s most popular sport - the equipment needed is so simple, anyone can play.
Galen Rupp and Mo Farah-- grew up playing soccer. Had a high school classmate who was being scouted by the local professional soccer team. We was super lazy in track but still ran a sub-2 880(!)
The US already has a semi-popular boring sport. It’s called baseball.
Our men’s team would absolutely dominate if all our best athletes played, it’s obvious. Source: our women’s team DOES dominate.
Sure, you can make that argument...But again, most of the women's team is essentially middle-distance runners... They aren't the female equivalent of Tyreek Hill.
But yes, soccer being one of the more popular sports for girls to play growing up certainly helps keep the talent in the sport! But the point of this post is it's a different talent than folks expect.
You can reverse the argument: if football was as popular with girls as it is with boys in Brazil or France or Germany, their women team would dominate.
I'm not sure that's really the case any more. The US team is no longer so dominant. They dominated totally at a time when the best European and South American soccer nations simply had very, very little interest in women's soccer. Even a generation ago, girls who played football regularly were relatively rare in England. Girls' football teams were few and the women's game attracted hardly any interest. It wasn't even professional till relatively recently. Now that the likes of Spain, England, Germany and Brazil have thriving women's football scenes, I would imagine that the US will struggle to dominate. They'll still be up there with the best, I think, because women's soccer is a much bigger part of the culture in the US than men's, but nothing like to the extent they were. Incidentally, as an Englishman, I've found it wonderful to see how far the England women's team has come in the past 20 years.
This makes sense to me. There is no need to spring 100 yards, and rarely even 40 in soccer. But as someone else mentions below, there is an explosion element to soccer. I wonder what an elite soccer player's time would be on the NFL's shuttle run. Even that might be a bit long at 20 yards. But Messi is incredibly quick over 5-10 yards and he's impossibly quick while dribbling.
I always thought of soccer as a speed sport. The players are near stationary and the sprinting over and over again throughout the match. So, this does surprise me quite a bit.
Not really. Most positions are in motion nearly all the time, with short bursts of speed. Players generally cover 6 to 8 miles during a match. Forwards are the exception, insofar as they stand around contributing nothing most of the time, then grab the glory.