Imagine an alternate reality where soccer was called football in America, and we were as passionate about the game adorned with that name as we are now, only this time our interest aligned with the rest of the world. If you accept that our best athletes would aspire to take the pitch, who would be the best of our World Cup team?
Would somebody like Kevin Garnett, who is 7 feet tall, but has the dexterity to dribble and shoot from outside, make for a great forward?
Would somebody like Barry Sanders, who had lightening quick reflexes and could stop on a dime, make for a great player? What about Bo Jackson? Would Bo have known Soccer?
How would Shaq have turned out if he had dreamed of standing in goal at the World Cup?
Would our greatest Football and Basketball players (and Hockey and Baseball, too, if you’re so inclined), if soccer-mad, made the US a dominant force in World Cup competition?
wolfman mentioned wide receivers and cornerbacks as examples of athletes who could make the switch. Those positions require pure sprinters who would not have the endurance to play soccer.
I think our future players are playing soccer now along with perhaps distance runners who are a bit too heavy to succeed at the higher levels of running.
You aren’t running at full tilt most of the time-probably standing around a good fraction of the game, so I don’t know if it would be exactly the same as a 1/4 marathon.
I always kind of figured the running of a soccer match was most akin to the running up and down a basketball court, which is why I imagined that very tall, lanky, agile NBA superstars would dominate soccer.
(and in my alternate universe, they wouldn’t be converting. They’d have been born in a society that played soccer)
They wouldn’t be sprinters and wouldn’t be making a switch. As an example, in the alternate reality of the OP, Adrian Peterson would have played soccer throughout his entire youth and gone straight into the Premiere League instead of becoming the most electric running back since Barry Sanders.
His question is simple: If all American athletes viewed soccer as the ultimate sport, (instead of basketball, as they do now,) how much better would the American team be? I’d say quite a bit. African Americans have a knack for dominating any sport they care about.
Allen Iverson - an exceptional athlete who excelled at both football and (obviously) basketball.
Lebron James - He’s 6’9 and can run like someone much shorter than he. He would have to be near the top of the list. Was apparently a very good football player as well.
I think the NBA players you want are the shooting guards/small forwards. Tall guys with athleticism. Kobe Bryant would be a legend, I’d wager.
I’d have to think there are some NFL runningbacks who could turn themselves into great soccer players, such as Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson
The thing is, non-goalie soccer players need great cardio above all else. It’s harder for really big guys to have that kind of cardio, so that’s going to cut down on some of the football players and larger basketball guys, too.
I’d think somebody like Shaq would make a lousy goalie. Big as he is, it’s going to be hard for him to get down to stop low shots. That, plus he’d probably get red carded for eating an opposing striker or two.
Drew Brees or Peyton Manning might be the starting goalie for a U.S. National team. From what I observed during the world cup, it looks like the goalie is sorta like a defensive QB, calling signals, directing the other players, that kinda thing.
Tall players would not dominate. At all. If they did, you’d see more people of that height from around the world. Sure, you get a couple like Crouch or Koller, or Mertesacker, but it’s not even close to the norm.
I think Allen Iverson is pretty much a perfect soccer body in a different sport. He’s got a hell of a lot of what you’d look for in an attacking midfielder too.
Really what you want at guys within a couple inches of 6’ on either side, that have great agility or body control in general, good speed, and hopefully endurance, although I think that most of that could be made up for in training. There are a few pros that still have issues with that though, so it’s not like it would be a non-issue.
There are hundreds or thousands of people with the general build. The thing that’s pretty much impossible to tell from other sports is dexterity with their feet. Training is required to develop those skill, but natural talent needs to be there in spades. I’m not sure how well being dexterous with one’s hands correlates with being dexterous with one’s feet.
For can’t-miss superstar talent, you’d have to think Barry Sanders would have dominated in his prime and been one of the greatest ever.
Like others have said, athleticism isn’t as important as technique/footwork, so it’s hard to say.
World class footballers are rarely world class athletes - I would guess that the majority are in the normal - good range of raw genetic athleticism, they just have the ability to control and play the football and train to a high standard. Look at Lionel Messi - does he look like an athlete to you? If you passed him in the street you’d think he worked in a bank.
NBA is an interesting comparison, but it’s just impossible to say whether great control of a ball with the hands will translate to control with the feet. It is unusual, mind, to see very tall football players at the top level. Certainly, the type of monstrous centre who lumbers up and down the court wouldn’t take to it. Maybe one of the elite guys who manage to combine extreme size with grace and fluidity could play. Didn’t Garnett play football (soccer) in school?
Current players: Practically any elite NFL cornerback, running back, or receiver, most notably Steve Smith, Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Brandon Marshall, or Calvin Johnson. You might see an Antonio Gates, Vernon Davis, or Tony Sheffler type of large player with exceptional athleticism.
In the NBA, Allen Iverson and LeBron James are probably at the top of my list. I can’t see why Kobe’s skills couldn’t translate to soccer either (can one player dominate a field in soccer like one can in basketball?) Slightly under the radar, I’d look at Nate Robinson.
In baseball, you’d be looking at your speedy, 5-tool players that might translate in some capacity.
Historically, to see Barry Sanders, Bo Jackson, Rickey Henderson, Deion Sanders, or Jerry Rice would probably be a treat. I’m not much of the jingoistic type, but if the US ever adopted soccer like we did our other sports and kids grew up playing it and really wanting to make it to the next level, I can’t see why the USA wouldn’t be up on par with Brazil.
There are basically no American sports where there is the need for the level of control and dexterity of the feet compared to soccer. Being good at soccer means being able to control the ball extremely well, something that athleticism itself is not going to get you. If soccer were a bigger sport in the US, there would be more effort put into the development of its players that currently play. Star athletes in other sports could hardly have been likely to be stars in other sports; instead, you’d see pretty much the same players, just with more experience playing at a higher level.
Not only is this clearly false, but I’m having trouble trying to imagine how anyone could think it is true at all.
Quite frequently star athletes are stars in multiple sports, and will play professionally in whichever sport pays better. For a quick example, Jim Brown was arguably the greatest Lacrosse player to ever live, but as a professional athlete he played American football in the NFL. Where he was arguable the greatest NFL player who ever lived.
Bo Jackson was a star in two different professional sports, (NFL and MLB,) at the same time.
These guys were obviously outliers, but with the amount of pressure put on specialization, the fact that they were able to shine in multiple sports at the highest level is evidence that athleticism is its own aptitude; the particular skillset an individual sport requires is a secondary concern.
Body control and coordination is pretty important, regardless of the sport. Some are more specialized than others. Even if you want to take the “The other American sports are completely unrelated to soccer”, it should also be safe to say that a similar pool of players that would play and be Very Good at soccer are pulled in other sports directions. If all of the athletes in our country would be pushed to just one sport, I think you’d see that the USA would end up with a large trove of top-tier soccer players.