Reply to Yahoo story: Why the world's game is a white game in the U.S.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If the athlete is focused on soccer, their ball skills would be on point.  So, I’d rather the elite athlete pool be focused on soccer than football, basketball, yada, yada.   Inherent in the counter argument is that there is some factor to success at soccer that is excluded from elite athletes.  There’s no such thing.  In a population, there will be a subset of elite athletes who have the right factors, including intelligence, to be top tier soccer players.  The difference between the US and other countries though is that soccer is sport number 4 or 5 on the list, not 1 or 2.  The argument that we are too focused on athletes in soccer as a country is a red herring.  [/quote]

I agree with some of what you are saying, but I would express it slightly differently.

If we define "athleticism" as strength, speed, throwing, and jumping then elite athletes excel at a subset of the skills which are useful in soccer.  The other necessary physical skills - foot-ball-eye coordination and agility - are also innate skills, but they are not related to athleticism.  Yes practice will improve those skills for anyone, but the ceiling for some is higher than for others just as everyone gets a faster 5K time with practice but most of us are not in the running for an olympic medal no matter how much practice we put in.

This is true of american football as well.  An elite athlete who can't catch is not going to be a very good wide receiver - and the ability to catch is not related to how fast you can run.  And - just as for soccer skills - practice can improve catching ability - but not without limit.

So the ideal soccer player has a balance of all the necessary skills.  Therefore it is of course going to improve the pool of soccer players if we add more excellent athletes to the pool of potential players since we know they already have many of the necessary abilities - and by random chance some of them will also have the remaining necessary abilities as well.  As a group they will be much better at soccer than average joes.  However they still would not be as good as a pool of people selected for a blend of [i][b]all[/b][/i] the necessary skills as opposed to just some of them.

So I completely agree with your point that losing a lot of potential players to other sports - when there is a large overlap between the people who excel at other sports and the people who excel at soccer - clearly impacts our competitiveness at soccer.

However I think we also do a poor job of identifying at a young age [b]some[/b] of the skills which make a good soccer player.  It is easy to identify speed and strength - perhaps because these skills have an outsize impact on wins and losses at younger ages - and so these kids are often promoted to the best teams and given the best coaching when kids whose ultimate potential might be higher are not as easily noticed at the younger age groups by many coaches.[/quote]

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