I agree with you, Mark Bullock disagrees with you. He had a discussion about this on Galdi's podcast. What he basically said was that it was different types of athletes. Soccer players were smaller, fasters, and the better athletes in football, baseball and basketball wouldn't be good soccer players.
I think there is some degree of truth to that, but not fully.
You're just not going to convince me that guys like Barry Sanders couldn't have been absolutely dominant and elite in soccer. Steph Curry is 6-2. If he focused on soccer, I think he's be pretty damn good at it. Sure, there probably isn't a position for Trent Williams.
But I think if we took the raw talent for that type of athlete, and focused it on soccer, and it was the most popular sport in the country, I think we would do better.
I do think it would be arrogant to think we would dominate. However, I think we would would be a lot more competitive.
For sure. I don’t get his argument because it’s not just the guys who bulk up and make it to the league, it’s also the lost potential of every single soccer-sized athletic body in America who plays American football instead, couldn’t make the league or D1, but never even looked at a soccer ball. Tons of great athletes don’t make it in their chosen sport and would’ve been great at something else if sculpted from a young age. Soccer doesn’t capture those athletes in America, they mostly either make it or wash out in other sports. In many countries, their soccer programs get almost the pick of the litter from birth lol
We have an enormous country of over 350M people now, if soccer was our #1 sports export like it is for most smaller countries, it’s hard to argue that the sheer number of potentially elite athletes who play other sports here (especially football) all being directed into a soccer development pipeline instead, from a young age, wouldn’t change outcomes in a huge way.
Not to mention that he’s just also wrong because correctly sized athletes change their bodies and sculpt their athleticism and skill sets based on the sport they play. At a formative age, when they were still elite clay, football skill players with elite footwork and ridiculous hand/eye coordination worked hard to develop wide bases and sturdy running styles and the ability to run routes and/or take a hit, and vision to find the holes an OL opens…instead of focusing on foot/eye coordination, field vision that applies to soccer, agility over strength and size, um actual soccer skills, etc…
Everything would be different. Obviously you wouldn’t be taking an elite NFL player (even a small one) and chucking him into soccer. You’d be taking the unformed clay he used to be and instead shaping it into a soccer player from birth. Millions of times, until different stars emerge and the results change
