Sports Gurus Sound Off: If the best athletes all played soccer growing up would we be a top 5 soccer club come World Cup play?

Sorry this is asking about the USA! How American of me to assume you’d know that I was referring to USA

Well, let me list the top 5 American athletes (in no particular order) in my opinion:
Tiger Woods
Kobe Bryant
Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
Tom Brady
LeBron James

That is one shitty soccer team. Kobe would never pass, Tiger would be out with a knee or back injury pretty quickly, Floyd Mayweather Jr. would need Justin Beiber to bail him out of jail. That leaves Tom and LeBron.

Impossible to say, all sports require different skills, football comprising of speed, strength, vision, energy, stamina & coordination.
Most other sports have a lot of those attributes, but there’s a subtle distinction to the application in each one.

Possibly. But the reason we aren’t a top 5 club has nothing to do with whether or not we have the talent. We could BUY the talent. There’s just not a sizable fan base to generate the revenues necessary to steer a talented athlete toward soccer in the United States. No one’s going to get a soccer scholarship to Notre Dame.

Yes, population, variety, the amount of time dedicated to sports, and overall weather would pretty much make sure we’d have a top 5 soccer/football team, if it was popular.

@stanleybmanly – Notre Dame won the 2013 National Men’s Championship, they’re mostly, if not all, on scholarship.

edited to correct myself: it appears they can offer up to the equivalent of 9.9 full scholarships on each team

@funkdaddy OOPS!