It has been a long-time complaint by US soccer enthusiasts (including myself) - get America's best athletes to play soccer, and it will put us in a different tax bracket in world soccer.
Patrick Hruby of ESPN has a different theory, referencing that exposure to a different standard of playing and training is the answer...and not athletic ability.
It happens every four years, as inevitable as presidential elections and surging public interest in short-track speedskating. The big, bad, rich n' populous United States falters at the World Cup. Meanwhile, skillful foreign mighty-mites from futbol-mad nations the size of Oregon shine.
Sitting at home, adjusting their pre-preseason fantasy football lineups, American sports fans pause to wonder: What if we had LeBron James at striker?
Or Patrick Willis enforcing the back line?
Or Dwight Howard in goal?
What if America cared about the beautiful game as much as every other country on the planet?
If only our best athletes played soccer. We'd kick [expletive]!
So goes the oft-repeated lament for Team USA, one echoed by pundits, sports writers, bloggers, television hosts and talk-radio callers alike. The basic idea works as follows:
Step 1: Have our athletic crème de la crème perform slide tackles and crossover dribbles instead of blindside tackles and, well, the other kind of crossover dribbles.
Step 2: Watch America dominate. Game over, Ghana!
Even Kobe Bryant -- who grew up in Italy wanting to star for Serie A powerhouse AC Milan -- buys into the concept, having once told reporters that "if myself, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James had a soccer ball at our feet instead of a basketball at 2 years old, it could have been something ... the [U.S. team] would have been pretty potent."
Would it?
Really?
Reggie Bush racing along the wing! Chris Paul controlling the midfield! Michael Phelps as wet-weather super-sub! The notion is tantalizing, downright irresistible, in a Dream Team-meets-"The Superstars" sort of way.
It's also spectacularly dumb.
Fact is, fielding a squad of our "best athletes" -- from football, basketball, et al. wouldn't help America capture its first World Cup any more than sending Bryant to the G20 summit would help us badger other industrialized nations into pumping up deficit spending.
Better television? Probably.
Better soccer? No chance.
Start with muscle. Size and strength. Natural resources our non-soccer jocks have in abundance. From Adrian Peterson's piston legs to Ron Artest's granite pecs, we are buff without peer, getting more ripped all the time. (Even our punters are jacked!) Problem is, added brawn is of little use on the pitch. On one hand, a guy built like Terrell Owens might have an easier time breaking out of a Slovenian set-piece bear hug; on the other hand, anyone that bulky would be too gassed to take advantage.
Soccer favors stamina over brute force. Consistent effort over sporadic outbursts. Do the biomechanical math. According to the Times of London, the average Premier League midfielder runs more than seven miles per match, a 10th of that sprinting speed or close to it. Average recovery time between sprints? All of 40 seconds, with few substitutions and no timeouts. (Modern soccer is also getting faster: According to EPL video analysis, the amount of sprinting doubled during the last decade.) Extra bulk means extra weight to drag around the pitch, with extra energy expended to do so.
Now consider physiology. The ideal sprinter is tall and muscled, with a high percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers that quickly burn energy and produce short, explosive runs. By contrast, the perfect distance runner is of short to medium height, with a high percentage of slow-twitch fibers that burn energy slowly and facilitate endurance. Ask yourself: Which of the above sounds more like an NFL receiver? Which sounds more like a central midfielder?
Patrick Hruby of ESPN has a different theory, referencing that exposure to a different standard of playing and training is the answer...and not athletic ability.
It happens every four years, as inevitable as presidential elections and surging public interest in short-track speedskating. The big, bad, rich n' populous United States falters at the World Cup. Meanwhile, skillful foreign mighty-mites from futbol-mad nations the size of Oregon shine.
Sitting at home, adjusting their pre-preseason fantasy football lineups, American sports fans pause to wonder: What if we had LeBron James at striker?
Or Patrick Willis enforcing the back line?
Or Dwight Howard in goal?
What if America cared about the beautiful game as much as every other country on the planet?
If only our best athletes played soccer. We'd kick [expletive]!
So goes the oft-repeated lament for Team USA, one echoed by pundits, sports writers, bloggers, television hosts and talk-radio callers alike. The basic idea works as follows:
Step 1: Have our athletic crème de la crème perform slide tackles and crossover dribbles instead of blindside tackles and, well, the other kind of crossover dribbles.
Step 2: Watch America dominate. Game over, Ghana!
Even Kobe Bryant -- who grew up in Italy wanting to star for Serie A powerhouse AC Milan -- buys into the concept, having once told reporters that "if myself, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James had a soccer ball at our feet instead of a basketball at 2 years old, it could have been something ... the [U.S. team] would have been pretty potent."
Would it?
Really?
Reggie Bush racing along the wing! Chris Paul controlling the midfield! Michael Phelps as wet-weather super-sub! The notion is tantalizing, downright irresistible, in a Dream Team-meets-"The Superstars" sort of way.
It's also spectacularly dumb.
Fact is, fielding a squad of our "best athletes" -- from football, basketball, et al. wouldn't help America capture its first World Cup any more than sending Bryant to the G20 summit would help us badger other industrialized nations into pumping up deficit spending.
Better television? Probably.
Better soccer? No chance.
Start with muscle. Size and strength. Natural resources our non-soccer jocks have in abundance. From Adrian Peterson's piston legs to Ron Artest's granite pecs, we are buff without peer, getting more ripped all the time. (Even our punters are jacked!) Problem is, added brawn is of little use on the pitch. On one hand, a guy built like Terrell Owens might have an easier time breaking out of a Slovenian set-piece bear hug; on the other hand, anyone that bulky would be too gassed to take advantage.
Soccer favors stamina over brute force. Consistent effort over sporadic outbursts. Do the biomechanical math. According to the Times of London, the average Premier League midfielder runs more than seven miles per match, a 10th of that sprinting speed or close to it. Average recovery time between sprints? All of 40 seconds, with few substitutions and no timeouts. (Modern soccer is also getting faster: According to EPL video analysis, the amount of sprinting doubled during the last decade.) Extra bulk means extra weight to drag around the pitch, with extra energy expended to do so.
Now consider physiology. The ideal sprinter is tall and muscled, with a high percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers that quickly burn energy and produce short, explosive runs. By contrast, the perfect distance runner is of short to medium height, with a high percentage of slow-twitch fibers that burn energy slowly and facilitate endurance. Ask yourself: Which of the above sounds more like an NFL receiver? Which sounds more like a central midfielder?
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