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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]At the top levels you have the good athletes who work hard to improve their skills -- it is not really that hard to figure out. 
If you are a great athlete but do not work to improve your skills you will top out.  People will give you a look -- think back to the time when pretty much every NBA team had some 7 footer sitting on the end of the bench on the theory that maybe with lots of coaching they could become good.  And, Major League baseball teams used to get sprinters to be base stealing specialists.  But those days are gone.  Simply put there is no one making an EPL first team who does not have very good skills and is a great athlete.  At that point, what you are looking at is comparing between folks who are great at everything, but when put with others who are great at everything their athletic ability and skill set gives them different advantages.

Now -- if you have the physical ability then yes you can improvce your skill set and take particular advantage of particular physical assets.  I tell this story all the time.  One of our good friends' oldest kid was, and still is, the best friend of a guy who he went to school with, and played a variety of sports with growing up.  As my daughter was best friends with their daughter, we would see their son and his friend a few times a year at backyard BBQ or walking through the house, and as polite kids do under threat of parental punishment, they always would stop to say hi to the parents' friends.  The kid was always nice, polite and obviously an athlete as he played sports with our friend's son who was a good athlete.  But, he was nothing special physically.  Not big, not small, not super muscular, just a normal sized athletic kid.  But, what he did do was work pretty much every single day that he did not have a baseball game, on his baseball skills.  Even when playing other sports.  Batting cage in the basement.  He and his dad basically spent an hour or so every day on something.  Every day.  For years.

He and his family turned downed being a 3rd round pick out of high school and he went to a very good baseball college.  Two years later he could be a low second round pick so he left school.  Two more years in the minors where he did well but not -- hey he's a future superstar -- got him onto a major league roster as a utility player.  Side story -- after his first major league hit Mark McGuire was playing first base for the opposing team and told him that he could tell it was a just a start -- nice thing to say to a rookie.  But, as it turned out, it really was just a start.  He's now one of the top players in the major leagues.  He's a mid 7 figure a year guy now.  His next contract likely will be one of those multi-year 9 figure deals and there's not a team that would kill to have him.

Obviously a guy who has the physical attributes but then he and his dad, for years and years, worked on developing his skills.  And, that work ethic continued into college and the pros.  And paid off.  Yet, if you saw him in high school, as we did, you would not have thought -- hey there's a kid who is headed to be a star player in the major leagues.
  [/quote]

Nice story. One thing soccer is different from baseball though is some skills for soccer cannot be learned by just practicing alone.[/quote]

Not relevant.
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