Heat3 wrote:Eddy_JukeZ wrote:So many people here don't realize that being athletic in basketball/NFL will not translate to being good in soccer if their focus was on soccer from the start.
There's more to soccer than sheer athleticism.
Kids here constantly play. It's probably the most played sport up to high school.
no, it doesn't mean that the best NFL players would be the best soccer players. but there are plenty of players that get weeded out of football that could have instead focused on soccer and maybe have been a success. those are lost opportunities. it even happens in other sports. occasionally you'll have a Jimmy Graham that plays basketball in college then all of a sudden is a star in the NFL. how many others could have done (not necessarily a star but a successful player) that if given the opportunity? there are probably plenty more but they get lost.
if American girls can become the top women players in the world, then so can the boys. The difference today is that the boys in general focus on different sports and while they may play soccer it isn't seen as a career goal.
I don't doubt there'd be an improvement, but to be the outright best is nonsense.
This isn't the only country with a ton of population focusing on soccer. There's lost opportunities in every country.
It'd take more than a higher focus on the sport to be the best. Even in this hypothetical, the way people value soccer players in this country is inherently different from other countries in reality from a youth level. So who's to say an increased focus, changes that valuation? If you counter with foreign coaches being brought in, the US did that recently to lead their national team and it didn't work out. Klinsmann wanted to uproot and decimated the flawed youth system in the states, but they refused to listen to him.
American women being the best(subjective, though there's an argument) is incomparable. The circumstances are completely different. No disrespect to women's sports.
