What NFL player would be the best soccer player?

[DesotoCountyDawg]

Until soccer is played in the street/park/yard here like it is in Europe and South America, you're not going to see much of a technical increase. That's where all the touch, creativity, and feel for the game comes from. You can't just teach it and it happen.

 

[HD6]

You act like hitting above .200 in Double A with zero experience since high school proves your point. It proves the opposite. Your friend would never get a hit, and neither would you or I. The fact that Jordan didn't strike out every single time he was at the plate is a tribute to how great an athlete he was.

 

[johnson86-1]

The most famous pro athlete in American sports history 'quit' basketball at the height of his popularity to play a different sport he had JUST as much experience in and was worse at that than my cousin Jeff in who smoked pot 3 times a day and sparingly practiced.

This is idiotic on a couple of levels. First, you think Jordan, who played over a decade of college and NBA basketball, had just as much experience in baseball as basketball?

Second, the last month or so of playing I think Jordan hit somewhere in the upper .200's I believe. Which means he basically walked on the field at arguably the second highest level of professional baseball and started just short of the Mendoza line, and became almost respectable in one season.

On the bright side, your cousin Jeff is apparently a borderline MLB player and you should convince him to lay off the pot for a little while and practice to see if he can get a good payday, but before you get him off the pot, you should get him to sign you as his agent so you can get a cut if he does make it.

 

[bonedaddy401]

Totally agree. That's why its fun to think what if Calvin Johnson, Camp Bailey, Chris Paul, Wes Welker or whoever had grown up developing the subtleties it takes to be world class.

 

[Desoto]

Espanada, your telling me that if lebron or cj2k or lesean McCoy grew up where neymar and messi did, playing soccer all the time and dedicated their life to it that they wouldn't be successful ? I never said they'd be as good as neymar or messi either. But they'd be pretty good. The top tier I referred to have God given talent and if that gift was focused solely on soccer I think they would do just fine. Now, the reality is that until soccer is more popular and we get more of the top athletes playing it'll never happen. That's why we get guys like Julian green to play for us.

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

I honestly believe if you took the top tier of players from all of "our" sports, they all would be very good soccer players. If they had focused all their time there.

Michael Jordan proved the whole "best athlete in one sport can probably play another sport at a high level" notion false. They would all probably be very good soccer players, but very good and elite are different things in the way that a Heisman trophy winner and an NFL MVP are different. Yes, you do have your occasional two-sport athlete (Bo, Deion), but for the most part players tend to specialize in one sport based on their abilities. If I were picking teams for a Sunday afternoon soccer game and Johnny Football showed up, I would absolutely pick him for my team, but I doubt he would have been good enough to go to Premier League or even MLS.

If you could run the experiment, it's highly likely that the best soccer player in the NFL (assuming the player spent his youth, college, and professional career playing soccer instead of football) is one of the 90+% of players who you would not consider elite NFL players.

 

[mcdawg22]

Which fanbase suffers from a bigger inferiority complex? Soccer fans or Southern fans?