Well that simple, Italians are the best athletes know to mankind…
Speaking of the French—I saw Greenie Jr’s little lightsaber, and it has a little cap on it. Apparently there is no more cutting involved. They just put this cap on it, and it falls off in a few days like an umbilical cord.
And don’t forget about Randy Moss when talking about great athletes. High-school all-star in baseball AND basketball AND football AND track.
He had to drop basketball and track when he got to college. I bet he coulda tore up a soccer pitch.
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actually that’s the thing which you’re not getting.
raise busquets and megatron playing soccer.it doesn’t matter…busquets would eat him alive in a match.even if he’s shorter and slower.
that’s the beautiful thing and if you’ve spent all your life watching american sports you wont get it.
can’t do shit if you’re 8 foot tall but don’t have the ball no?
You’re going to go back to the 1930’s and 1950’s to make a point and think that’s relevant today? Really? The success of the Netherlands is pretty amazing given their population. Kind of like Jamaica’s success in track and field.
Because they’ve spent their entire lives playing and he has not. You have no idea what kinds of skills he could have if he’d spent his entire life playing. Maybe he would suck, or maybe he would dominate. If you were given the option to pick someone at 5 years old and try to develop him into a world class soccer player and knew one of them was going to be taller, faster, and heavier than all the others, are you honestly telling me you would pick one of the others?
ummm.
i’m just saying that it’s not the end all though it’s obviously an advantage.
the british have resources,a decent sized population and a culture of football but they suck and are perenial underachievers.
the dane’s,croat’s and a few others have far less resources and have outperformed them in recent times.
If the others had better touch, control, and coordination, then yes, I would pick them over Megatron.
If you have no idea how good his skill is going to be, then there is not really much of a basis for your argument.
What you need to grasp is that soccer players have certain desirable characteristics, and unless Megatron meets those, then he’s not going to be a world class player, and the most important requirements are skill, then speed. He has the speed, but what about the first part?
But that ignores the key presumption that our best football players played soccer from an early age and nothing else. Given that, I’m sure their athletism would allow them to pick up the fundamentals easily.
Flatly untrue.
Take Thierry Henry, who is very athletic, he cannot dream of having Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s touch and control.
when barcelona picked up messi he was a kid with a growth hormone problem who they said would be too weak to play football again. they flew him over because they though his touch,vision and ethos would match perfectly.
the americans hyped up freddy adu because he was quick,powerful and could dominate his age group.
see how that turned out?That’s exactly what we’re saying if there are two players on an equal plane technically then by all means go for the bigger one.
but technique has so many variables in football-touch,countrol,vision,reading of the game etc that it’s almost never the case
Regarding Megatron, you’re making him out to be unusual, and while he certainly is, the NFL is full of superfast, 6ft+ athletes that don’t stand a chance of making an NFL roster. Why don’t they make it? Because they lack all the other characteristics you need to be an NFL player.
It can’t be flatly untrue because it’s pure speculation. The hypothesis that a gifted athlete could pick up any sport that he’s physically suited for is a solid one.
It’s a guessing game and I’m not sure how you can so obtusely deny the possibility.
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yes you can pick up the fundamentals.
to pick up the fundamentals of football you do not need size,not in europe and latin america.
it’s how you interpret the fundamentals and hone them that will decide whether you make it or not.size and perhaps even speed is not a big factor depending on the position you choose to play
Simply because there is little or no evidence it’s true. Just because Megatron is 6’5, has a 4.3 40 and had 1600 yards last season tells you little or nothing about his touch, control, passing skill, dribbling skill, decision making etc.
As isildurr noted, picking up the fundamentals is hardly enough, you’d need skill at a world class level to be in this discussion.
So why do you believe that of all the tall, fast, powerful guys in the NFL, none of them would have a chance of having world class soccer skills? So maybe Megatron wouldn’t have those skills and would wash out. What about AP, RG3, DRC, Cam Newton, Dez Bryant, Jacoby Jones, Andre Johnson, Chris Johnson, Arian Foster, etc., etc., etc.? You find it entirely inconceivable that a population that produces such freaks of nature could also produce world class soccer players if that was the athletic focus of that population?
Wait… We’re getting off track.
The argument is not Megatron (or any other individual athlete) vs. Top Euro Futbol
The argument is the unparalleled money-driven machine of a sports culture we have in the US vs. Top Euro Futbol countries.
The point people are making here is that if the US sports culture can produce such ridiculous athletes whom are so well-tuned to their sports (and athleticism in general) as Megatron and LeBron james, that same culture could definitely produce futbol players who were at the elite world level, also – given that the entire culture was re-focused from its roots.
The US sports culture values size & strength because that is what it takes in our chosen sports. If soccer had been the sport of the country and the culture developed around the skills required for that sport, then the machine would produce elite soccer players.
This I agree with. OTOH “Megatron and Adrian Peterson would dominate the world of soccer” is ridiculous.
it is inconceivable.
because the sporting culture is all about power and that’s what you’ll put the emphasis on if you decide to promote football.
countries which follow the same ethos as you-case in point britain which also has a substaintial african decent population are simply getting dismantled now.
as noted above by palantir france did what you’re saying,it was a national scandal…they’re not even in the picture now. they’re barely top 10 in europe.
You’re arguing based on the current landscape – no one is arguing that if we decide today that all our best athletes are going to play soccer, that we’ll dominate you.
The point is that if our national pass-time was and had been soccer for as long as we’ve been playing baseball/basketball/football, our money-fueled sports-machine of a culture (by far the biggest in the world) would value (and therefore produce) what it takes to compete on the elite level of soccer.
Nicely done.