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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Running a mile in 5:30 does not mean you have good fitness for soccer.[/quote]

Actually it's not a bad proxy.  A kid who can run a mile in 5:30 is probably in reasonable soccer shape too.  Could I devise a better test?  Sure.  Could I devise a better test given the time, resources and equipment available to a high school soccer coach?  No - not one that would make sense.  He wants two things
(a)  a goal to set his kids to encourage them to get in shape.
(b)  a very easy to administer trial process that he can get out of the way in ten minutes at the start of his first tryout session so he can focus on watching the kids play soccer for the rest of the week.

[quote]Soccer fitness is fitness in the context of soccer. A player performs actions upon actions in a game, some of them runs, some of them sprints, some of them may not involve much movement. A player's ability to maintain good actions through 90 mins is soccer fitness.[/quote]

None of that changes the fact that there will be a high correlation between a middle distance run and soccer fitness.  The two activities pose similar challenges to the body's systems and training to improve one will improve the other.  Is it as perfect match?  No.  But it will work pretty well as a quick and dirty measure.

[quote] Without defenders, a ball, a goal, and a direction, you don't have any of the context of a game. Stop breaking the game down into neat "sections" you can someone improve individually of each other. You don't get better at chess by playing checkers.

The issue here is that the US is obsessed with the fitness industry and rarely looks beyond that in sports. It's why Adama Traore's arms where newsworthy on ESPN. All of you who buy this as a good measure of fitness, or say that it was done in the past, which is why it must be good, you're just making the same thinking errors that have been made here for 40 years. The US national team has never lacked players who are fast, strong, or whatever other bs term you want to attach to non contextual fitness. Go do crossfit, where the fittest people in the world apparently can only compete at... crossfit. [/quote]

What has any of this got to do with this high school coach?  He has asked his players to get fit.  Seems perfectly sensible to me.  A bunch of you have then assumed, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that that means he knows nothing about soccer, is going to pick all the wrong players etc.[/quote]

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