No need to talk down other sports just because it’s not your type. I find baseball extremely boring, but I don’t run around and say baseball players are not athletes. Soccer is the world’s most popular sports for a reason.
The fact that an average Joe can play soccer and actually has a chance to make it to the top is one of the reasons why it’s so popular
It's a double edged sword, the accessibility that makes it popular internationally leads to disrespect when it comes to the level of athleticism required when compared to sports with high bars for entry.
Look at Pele, Cristiano Ronaldo Very Strong, Fast, Laterally Quick, they are in a Athletic Sport. Futbol is non stop running. Just a Halftime break. Timeout is Limited. Substitution is quicker during play. 45 minutes in each half 90 minutes total. Basketball, American Football, Baseball uses Timeouts very often in shorter Time Limit.
Average running distance per soccer game for one player is 6.4 miles. And that’s with full speed sprints. Baseball? Meh
It's just different, sports like football and basketball are high intensity relatively low duration, soccer tends to be mostly low intensity high duration. It's power lifting vs lifting for reps.
For most baseball positions it's not much. Outfielders actually do a lot of running though. From the dugout to center field is like 300 feet, and they have to jog there and back twice per inning. That's a couple of miles just getting to and from your defensive spot. Any time the ball is hit potentially in their area they have to run after it, plus any baserunning they do over the course of the game. Probably adds up to 4 or 5 miles on average, if I were to guess.
Lmao, depending on positions, in soccer the trend is different, Positionless became less important and Positioning is very important. Wingers and full backs have to run up and down in 90 minutes........in full intensity. Of course there are more empty miles because you just cannot score in seconds like in basketball....... The emphasis should be more on Empty intensity........than Low Intensity.......but because you run more and waste opportunities, you would win more opportunities to score....... Also there is a goal keeper that keeps scoring relatively low compared to basketball. Low scoring and not low intensity. But yeah, not everyone touches the ball when defense transitions to Offense, that probably has 8 players running slower than the more important 14 players on the pitch.
I've never seen a single soccer game that ANYONE playing full intensity for 90 minutes. That's not to trivialize what they do, you have to be in insanely good shape to handle that much cardio, but most of the time it's light jogging more than sprints for most of the players. Of course mixing in full speed sprints with constant jogging is super difficult, but let's not exaggerate.
Not that soccer is at any level is some barn burner high scoring sport, at the youth level here in Houston they have Fun Fair Positive Soccer where they don't focus on winning either. What's next non-contact checkers? What happened to create that league? Were teams wining 2-0?
I remember reading a comparison a while back that compared the past season of premier league with the prior season of NFL. If I remember correctly there were a total of .2 goals scored more per game than touch downs. I was quite surprised and had never thought of it like that. That doesn't take into account field goals though.
God forbid a sport exists that you can watch for 45min+ at a time w/ no commercials. Also, they are 100% athletes. Not an opinion.
Let’s keep this thread going with the wild takes like Soccer players are not athletes. The best way to remember kpj and kpj only fans.
Like saying an average Joe can play football or tennis. Basketball is the only truly inaccessible sport in the world.
You probably would enjoy hanging out with me. I've got many liberal friends/family. We LOL a lot hangout share good craft beer/ wine and truly enjoy each others company.
