re: Title IX the reason the USA is a women's but not a men's power...

No homo but Sanchez is pretty jacked and ripped

If Sanchez were to start playing American football, he would put on more weight. His playing weight wouldn't be 132.

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If Sanchez were to start playing American football, he would put on more weight. His playing weight wouldn't be 132.

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Absolutely, but I doubt he would get over 175 without losing noticeable amounts of quickness. And how many guys that short are playing D1? RB is one of the positions where height matters least, but 5'7 is definitely on the short end (maybe beyond the end).

For all the talk about our "top athletes" not playing, lets be real to a certain extent its true but a lot of our top athletes wouldn't have been elite soccer players-- look at the size and build of top soccer players- maybe some WRs, CBs, RBs and shooting guards could migrate over if they had the footskill, and maybe 1 or 2 athletic QBs would be good at driving an offense (though most would lack the athleticism) but how many 6'8" soccer players are there at the top level? Lebron for example is a basketball player if he's born in Europe or South America as well, a guy like Brady probably plays pub soccer and can analyze things and see things develop well but is to slow to do anything about it.

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So you're saying young soccer players in other countries...don't receive a high school education?


Wow...


Please educate yourself, even just a little bit.

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The Ajax youth academy is not a boarding school. The players all live within a 35-mile radius of Amsterdam (some of them have moved into the area to attend the academy). Ajax operates a fleet of 20 buses to pick up the boys halfway through their school day and employs 15 teachers to tutor them when they arrive. Parents pay nothing except a nominal insurance fee of 12 euros a year, and the club covers the rest — salaries for 24 coaches, travel to tournaments, uniforms and gear for the players and all other costs associated with running a vast facility. Promising young players outside the Ajax catchment area usually attend academies run by other Dutch professional clubs, where the training is also free, as it is in much of the rest of the soccer-playing world for youths with pro potential. (The U.S., where the dominant model is “pay to play” — the better an athlete, the more money a parent shells out — is the outlier.)


Full article which will hopefully shut you up.

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The pay to play thing is a great point-- its also a huge obstacle in Baseball and its turning that sport (and has in some ways turned soccer) into a sport of dominated by suburban middle to upper middle class kids-- contrast that with Football or especially Basketball- you think someone like Derek Rose plays on a ton of AAU travelling teams growing up if his parents have to shell out 5 grand a year in travel costs alone? Its not a meritocracy its based on who can afford the best private coaches, the only position like it in Basketball or Football is Quaterback and even thats not as common.

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Your point is good but I think you're tending towards equating athleticism with freakish physical traits.

My biggest observation of the physical build of most world class soccer players is that they tend to be very average. You have some outliers that are quite tall but most tend to be in the "average male height" category... weights also tend to be pretty "average"... in fact, they often tend to slot right into the "normal weight" range if you calculate their BMI.

But, having a freakish physical build doesn't make someone more athletic. Lionel Messi is the definition of "average" physically... until he starts running. He's not blazing fast but his agility and ability to change directions would make most NFL running backs jealous.

The real point, though, is that we don't need our country's "best athletes" (as defined by their performance in sports that aren't soccer like football, basketball, etc) to field a top class soccer team... we need great soccer players... and great soccer players are developed, not born.

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Actually, this does bring up an interesting point-- we could very well have some guys who if they had developed properly and played soccer would have been world class who maybe topped out as say a great college QB or a back up college PG-- guys with all the speed and agility you could want with high athletic IQs who don't meet the relatively rigid height/weight standards of elite Basketball and Football. This is why a viable highpaying MLS is important-- if the kid whose the star 5'8" PG in HS knows he can make millions in soccer instead of getting a preferred walk on offer to a Sunbelt school maybe he takes a different path.