How dominant USA would be in comparison to Brazil, France or Spain if their main sport is football?

deafepl

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Obviously, Brazil, France, Germany, and Spain have produced a lot of top players for their national team in the last few decades.

I was wondering how the powerful the USA would be if football (Soccer) is the most dominant sports in the USA, considering their economy and population? Imagine there's another world where the USA is on the same level as France, England, Germany, and Spain in term of talents production, league, coaching and player's dreams?
 

adexkola

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This has always been an annoying question.

Greatness at football is not correlated to population size or money. And thank feck for that.

A majority of our sports originated here, and we have a huge lead on the rest of the world with regards to them, or the world views these sports as secondary to the main one which is football. Using our dominance in basketball for example to imply that if our main sport was football, we'd be top, is absurd.
 

stepic

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This has always been an annoying question.

Greatness at football is not correlated to population size or money. And thank feck for that.
Stands to reason that a big population to choose players from and lots of money and infrastructure will lend itself to success.
 

El Zoido

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This has always been an annoying question.

Greatness at football is not correlated to population size or money. And thank feck for that.
They kind of are. USA would absolutely dominate if it was their main sport, they have a massive population and the money & infrastructure to fully exploit that.
 

adexkola

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Stands to reason that a big population to choose players from and lots of money and infrastructure will lend itself to success.
It historically hasn't. Otherwise the UK would have won more than one WC since 1966. The Netherlands would be a minnow in world football. Argentina wouldn't feature at all. China. And so on.
 

Ish

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This has always been an annoying question.

Greatness at football is not correlated to population size or money. And thank feck for that.

A majority of our sports originated here, and we have a huge lead on the rest of the world with regards to them, or the world views these sports as secondary to the main one which is football. Using our dominance in basketball for example to imply that if our main sport was football, we'd be top, is absurd.
Good point. Though I’d think they’d become very competitive - there’s just no way into telling how competitive exactly, IMO. Winning world cups or simply just making the knockouts (R16 - semis) regularly?
 

adexkola

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They kind of are. USA would absolutely dominate if it was their main sport, they have a massive population and the money & infrastructure to fully exploit that.
Is there a direct correlation between GDP and success at football? Or population and success at football?

I've seen tons of kids being hauled to soccer practice over the years. A lot of money goes into the sport here. Not as much as gridiron or basketball, but enough to dwarf the investments of a lot of countries. Why, pray tell, is the US ranked 30 in the world?
 

duffer

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This is not the point of the thread but would any of the giants who play in the NFL or NBA actually make good footballers? Can't think of any really great players who were above 6'5" anywhere else in the world, ever.
 

Siorac

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This is not the point of the thread but would any of the giants who play in the NFL or NBA actually make good footballers? Can't think of any really great players who were above 6'5" anywhere else in the world, ever.
Centre-backs?
 

adexkola

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This is not the point of the thread but would any of the giants who play in the NFL or NBA actually make good footballers? Can't think of any really great players who were above 6'5" anywhere else in the world, ever.
Maybe wide receivers or point guards? Wide receivers need to be able to run and cut rapidly across the field, requires great footwork. Point guards (at least traditional ones) need to coordinate the offense so need some sort of intelligence beyond pure strength and shot making ability.

Physical strength is a prerequisite, but I never looked at the iconic football teams of yore and thought, "they were so much more physically dominant". The skillset is totally different from what you require at most positions in gridiron football or basketball or baseball.
 

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Is there a direct correlation between GDP and success at football? Or population and success at football?

I've seen tons of kids being hauled to soccer practice over the years. A lot of money goes into the sport here. Not as much as gridiron or basketball, but enough to dwarf the investments of a lot of countries. Why, pray tell, is the US ranked 30 in the world?
On the population part all you have to do is look at Uruguay, Belgium and maybe Holland
 

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I’m American and want us to be good but this question is pointless.

Even with the best ‘athletes’ which I don’t totally buy you won’t automaticlly just be the best. Look at spain 2010 how many physical specimens did they have?

We have humans with xavi and iniestas build already it’s just the whole technique thing.
 

duffer

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Maybe wide receivers or point guards?

Physical strength is a prerequisite, but I never looked at the iconic teams of yore and thought, "they were so much more physically dominant". The skillset is totally different from what you require at most positions in gridiron football or basketball or baseball.
I really only talking about the big boys. I wanna see what Shaq could've done playing football in a world where basketballs and NFL didn't exist!
 

adexkola

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Good point. Though I’d think they’d become very competitive - there’s just no way into telling how competitive exactly, IMO. Winning world cups or simply just making the knockouts (R16 - semis) regularly?
Yeah true.

I'd define success as being expected to make deep runs into the WC knockout stages. If they ever merge the North and South American federations, or invite the US to the Copa America, then winning that would be a good sign of quality.
 

Classical Mechanic

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This has always been an annoying question.

Greatness at football is not correlated to population size or money. And thank feck for that.
There’s a book called soccernomics that found the correlation to three factors, population size, GDP and experience (years playing international football). There are outliers of course with Brazil being the only significant one among the major nations.

It seems fairly obvious to me that nations with a strong football culture, high population meaning more potential top athletes and high GDP meaning better infrastructure to develop talent would do better at the sport.

It also explains the US women’s teams dominance too. They’ve had a big head start on participation and infrastructure. Only very recently are most European nations starting to develop a women’s football culture.
 

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Yeah true.

I'd define success as being expected to make deep runs into the WC knockout stages. If they ever merge the North and South American federations, or invite the US to the Copa America, then winning that would be a good sign of quality.
Yeah. I agree. Winning the Gold cup will never mean much, so their progress at this point, generally seem to be their WC performance but it would be good for them if they could compete with the South American countries as well.
 

Classical Mechanic

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Exactly my point.

China should have won 3 WCs by now. What's their population, billions and shit. Ditto for the money they have
Look at the history of international football in China, it’s been fractured by politics. They don’t have the football culture. The Chinese government realise this and the mass investment in their league recently was state ordered to develop that culture with the aim of winning the World Cup ultimately.
 

limerickcitykid

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A lot of money goes into the sport here.
Except it doesn't. A lot of money comes from the players and into the pockets of the suits and never into the game. Kids paying thousands of dollars a year to be coached by unqualified parents isn't putting a lot of money into the sport.
 

adexkola

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There’s a book called soccernomics that found the correlation to three factors, population size, GDP and experience (years playing international football). There are outliers of course with Brazil being the only significant one among the major nations.

It seems fairly obvious to me that nations with a strong football culture, high population meaning more potential top athletes and high GDP meaning better infrastructure to develop talent would do better at the sport.

It also explains the US women’s teams dominance too. They’ve had a big head start on participation and infrastructure. Only very recently are most European nations starting to develop a women’s football culture.
We'll have to wait and see whether that last feature (experience playing international football) is as big of a factor as is claimed. It may explain the correlation but will it be accurate predicting the success of China and India and the US in the future?

I think what grates me about this question is that it can be reframed as, "if the US tried they'd be number 1, they just don't want to". That sounds so douchey (for lack of a better word). And this is coming from an American.
 

montpelier

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Contend rather than dominate, I think.

You can only play 11 at a time so the vastness of numbers to pick from past a certain point is probably not the defining advantage.
 

Chipper

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This made me remember "The Gooch", Onguchi Onyewu. I used to post on American forum, he was/is a big athletic central defender and lots of them thought was going to be great because of his size/strength. He had a loan move at Newcastle and he was a bit rubbish.

In general though, I do think they'd be better if it was their main sport.
 

deafepl

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Exactly my point.

China should have won 3 WCs by now. What's their population, billions and shit. Ditto for the money they have
If they play football as main sports and invest a lot of money in the football industry and assemble bigger pool to choose, I think they'd be very completive against top dogs, there's no way we can tell how many WCs China should have won.

So I'm comparing the USA to Europeans football on the same levels, I think the USA would be far ahead of them in term of popularity, language, football industry revenue. MLS would be an undisputed no.1 league in the world, as Europe has many top players spreading all over top 5 leagues in Europe but it won't be the case for the USA as they only have MLS. I think it would be a dream career for every top player to play in the USA, especially the USA will offer better salary and weather, better lifestyle. That's my perspective.
 

Classical Mechanic

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We'll have to wait and see whether that last feature (experience playing international football) is as big of a factor as is claimed. It may explain the correlation but will it be accurate predicting the success of China and India and the US in the future?

I think what grates me about this question is that it can be reframed as, "if the US tried they'd be number 1, they just don't want to". That sounds so douchey (for lack of a better word). And this is coming from an American.
I think experience playing international football relates to a strong football culture.

I think the US would be up there for sure if it was their national sport. I doubt it would be like the women’s game though because there are many other wealthy and large nations with that deep football culture. There wouldn’t be that massive imbalance in player quality that we see in the women’s game currently, everyone is playing catch up to the US women’s team and they look the only fully developed side.
 

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Their big chance was the WC'94, but they built jackshit afterwards (they just don't care). At least the female version is the best in the world, mainly because female American Football is a joke (lingerie league), and the female leagues of baseball and basketball are not as popular as the male ones (I'm not sure there's even a female baseball league to begin with). (European) Football is a natural choice for american girls who are not tall enough for basketball or don't like basketball.

F-1 will never take off in the USA either: they have NASCAR.
 

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I think they would be up there. Their talent pool would be enormous and if USA made it there main Sport they would be up there.