cddolphin Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 1 minute ago, eagles101 said: The vast majority of nfl players would be completely useless on soccer field as they are built for short burst instead of long extended play. Okay, and if those NFL players played soccer since childhood instead of football their bodies would have acclimated differently, yet they would have the same physical toolbox to work with. We're not talking about plucking 29 year old Gronk and putting him on the field as a CB on Real Madrid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DontTazeMeBro Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 1 minute ago, eagles101 said: The vast majority of nfl players would be completely useless on soccer field as they are built for short burst instead of long extended play. That’s absolutely not true. Extended play is about conditioning. No one is naturally built for it. Everyone on this forum could get the required conditioning if we did the training Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagles101 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 1 minute ago, cddolphin said: I think if you take someone as a child who you know will have top 0.01% athletic ability, clone him, put one in football and the other in soccer and invest the same amount in either athlete, they will find comparable levels of success, which I would define as making it to the professional leagues in their respective sports. Getting an NFL or La Liga contract in and of itself is an elite-level accomplishment when you're talking about general population and/or performance in a sport. I would say thats very possible but vastly different than the original point of “ if we had odell (and other athletes) in soccer we would dominate” i wouldnt be suprised if most top tier athletes could become professionals at almost any sport. What i doubt is that you could just take all the nfl studs and train them in soccer from kids and they can beat any team anywhere or even fully compete against world class teams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagles101 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 4 minutes ago, cddolphin said: Okay, and if those NFL players played soccer since childhood instead of football their bodies would have acclimated differently, yet they would have the same physical toolbox to work with. We're not talking about plucking 29 year old Gronk and putting him on the field as a CB on Real Madrid. But my point is we have no idea how they would translate. Gronkis the perfect example. Gronk has shown nothing that suggests he could fit the athletic requirements for soccer. Not the endurance for running nor the speed soccer players have or the footwork they have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cddolphin Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 3 minutes ago, eagles101 said: i wouldnt be suprised if most top tier athletes could become professionals at almost any sport. What i doubt is that you could just take all the nfl studs and train them in soccer from kids and they can beat any team anywhere or even fully compete against world class teams. The bolded is what I'm saying, but I also firmly believe if you took all the Lebrons and Gronks as kids in an alternate universe where all the top athletes went into soccer instead of the top 3 leagues, the US would do far, far better in international soccer. Would there be 100% talent transfer? No that would be a silly expectation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagles101 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 7 minutes ago, cddolphin said: The bolded is what I'm saying, but I also firmly believe if you took all the Lebrons and Gronks as kids in an alternate universe where all the top athletes went into soccer instead of the top 3 leagues, the US would do far, far better in international soccer. Would there be 100% talent transfer? No that would be a silly expectation. We obviously would be better at soccer, if not the best, if we didnt have other top sports and soccer was the cream of the crop. My only argument is that its not likely that the top athletes in basketball and football would inherently be top atheltes in soccer. I dont think its crazy that someone like desean jackson could become the best soccer player and gronk be a bench players in an alternate reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cddolphin Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 2 minutes ago, eagles101 said: Gronk has shown nothing that suggests he could fit the athletic requirements for soccer. Not the endurance for running nor the speed soccer players have or the footwork they have. But how could he have shown sport-specific skills for a sport he doesn't play? Just because I haven't seen Gronk do these things doesn't mean I believe him to be physically incapable of learning them, or having had the ability to learn while he was building those initial neural pathways as a young person. First of all, endurance is the most overrated aspect of soccer. Mid-fielders 'run' around 7 miles over the 95~ish minutes of a soccer match, not including the 15 minute break. So in any given half their average pace is about half that of your average Joe's 5k pace, and of course they're alternating between light jogging, barely moving, and full-on sprints. There are plenty of things Gronk does on a football field that would transfer to playing centre-back. He can sprint. He can leap and high-point balls. He has the right size, he has the skillset of boxing out defenders. He can run with/around people who are covering him with a point of contact and who are jostling for position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cddolphin Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 1 minute ago, eagles101 said: I dont think its crazy that someone like desean jackson could become the best soccer player and gronk be a bench players in an alternate reality. Nor do I, what would be crazy is Gronk not making a roster at all is what I'm saying. If you make it to the professional leagues in any sport, you are in the top tenth of the top 1%, at least, and that's a damned big accomplishment in and of itself. I don't think HOF football players would automatically be HOF soccer players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagles101 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 10 minutes ago, cddolphin said: Nor do I, what would be crazy is Gronk not making a roster at all is what I'm saying. If you make it to the professional leagues in any sport, you are in the top tenth of the top 1%, at least, and that's a damned big accomplishment in and of itself. I don't think HOF football players would automatically be HOF soccer players. Thats my whole point though. It was argument against the idea because we have top athletes in sports we like they would be top athletes in soccer making us the best soccer country. Not that they cant become it but more that we havent seen these people show any real transferable skills that would show how good they would be at soccer. Its a huge speculation. Because as you said they cant show sport soecific skills in sports they dont play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buc Ball Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Soccer is a completely different skill set to most other sports. That’s why you don’t get as many two sport athletes who have soccer as their main sport because most of the skills simply don’t translate. Athletic ability only gets you so far in soccer. Technical ability is more important, as is the ability to read a game. You can’t teach someone to read a game to the level that you need to in order to be a good professional soccer player - a lot of it has to be inherent. It’s too fluid a game to be too focused on rules for certain situations. By all means, guys like DeSean Jackson would have a role. But he’d just be another Demarcus Beasley. Ie, not that good when compared to the guys at the very top. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buc Ball Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 27 minutes ago, cddolphin said: But how could he have shown sport-specific skills for a sport he doesn't play? Just because I haven't seen Gronk do these things doesn't mean I believe him to be physically incapable of learning them, or having had the ability to learn while he was building those initial neural pathways as a young person. First of all, endurance is the most overrated aspect of soccer. Mid-fielders 'run' around 7 miles over the 95~ish minutes of a soccer match, not including the 15 minute break. So in any given half their average pace is about half that of your average Joe's 5k pace, and of course they're alternating between light jogging, barely moving, and full-on sprints. There are plenty of things Gronk does on a football field that would transfer to playing centre-back. He can sprint. He can leap and high-point balls. He has the right size, he has the skillset of boxing out defenders. He can run with/around people who are covering him with a point of contact and who are jostling for position. I doubt Gronkowski has the agility to play soccer. Maybe if he was walking about at 200lbs, he’d have the suddenness to change direction, but I doubt he’d be able to stay with smaller players. You see it all the time with tall players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DontTazeMeBro Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 The freakin mailman has been sitting there talking to my neighbor for like 30 minutes. No wonder the mail gets here about 2 hours earlier on his days off 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LETSGOBROWNIES Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 3 minutes ago, DontTazeMeBro said: The freakin mailman has been sitting there talking to my neighbor for like 30 minutes. No wonder the mail gets here about 2 hours earlier on his days off I love that you’ve been watching and timing your mailman’s conversations. ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ET80 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 1 hour ago, Buc Ball said: I doubt Gronkowski has the agility to play soccer With his size and catch radius, I think he could be a goalie. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ty21 Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 2 hours ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said: I love that you’ve been watching and timing your mailman’s conversations. ? He has to make sure the NSA doesn't go through his mail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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