Are top flight footballers better than equivalent athletes from other sports?

[mariachi-19]

I always remember this: when I was at school a good mate of mine was into road cycling. He was in the top-ten for his age group in the country, liked a fag though.

Everytime we did cross-country (like once a year when the weather was shittiest) he would win it by 5 minutes, at least, so I'd have to say those Tour de France/Olympic cyclists must be right up there.

Also agree the gymnasts have some power and that Adam Peaty, the swimmer, he looks solid.

The difference is that endurance athletes don’t really come into the equation because they don’t really need to have an extensive skill set. More so than anything, things like cycling, running etc, require mental strength and genetic cardiovascular freakishness over ability. You could teach anybody to ride a bike or to run. It’s up to the mental strength of the individual to determine how fast and how hard they are willing to work to a point (sprinting is a different beast altogether). Also, most pro cyclists are told when to attack, went to chill etc so the thought process is even reduced.

Thats’s not to be disrespectful but as somebody who is a pretty good cyclist (especially for my weight class), I am a truly woeful footballer. Im not talented, I just work hard.


What a will say that AFL players would generally give EPL players a run for their money, if not be the superior athletes.

Putting it in another sense, if Australia perceived football like the uk (where the Rugby’s and AFL were second tier sports) we would be a power house of word football.

 

[Mart1974]

Is this really true? I mean I watch football and basketball in equal measure and I believe the skill level of the top 20 basketball players is higher than that of the best 20 footballers. Its hard to say as a whole if the average PL/La liga/CL footballer is better than the average NBA or NFL player, there's almost no way of measuring that.

100% agree. I would argue that the athletic ability in Basketball is higher too. You don't see any chubby top flight Basketball players.

 

[Rajma]

Incredibly difficult to compare team sport athletes with individual ones as mental preparation required to compete there is totally different given that you cannot have an off day as there are no teammates to carry you.

 

[KeanoMagicHat]

Just because football is more popular does not always equal better, football is by far the most accessible sport in the world and the best marketed, as a result, it has the most players playing it, but also it's the easiest one to make a living in.

To play in the squad of a top 5 European League, there are 2,254 available slots, if you bring in other leagues there are probably 10,000-15,000 very well paid and respected professional football roles. You can get paid more to play in League Two (Salford have paid players £300k a year) than you can to win an Olympic medal in certain other sports. Meanwhile, 200 in the world in tennis is nowhere in terms of making a good level. If you excel at a less popular and more complicated sport, it doesn't mean that you are necessarily worse because less people are interested in it.

Michael Cox uses a poor music example there imo, but if you're to compare again to music, just because pop music is more popular than a very complicated heavy guitar solo, and much more people are trying to do it, doesn't necessarily mean all successful pop stars are more talented.

 

[Okey]

Tough to answer objectively, but it's hard to watch basketball and think footballers are better athletes than those in general.

 

[Daniel_de_Foe]

That isn't even true for football itself. You have to play football in a semiprofessional environment. It' not the Nineties you won't become a professional footballer if you still playing on the streets at the age of ten.
The biggest football association in the world is the DFB(German Football Association) with oder 7 Million Members. By this logic it has the largest pool of players in a semiprofessional environment and therefore German players should dominate the football world like China in table tennis. Far far better than smaller nations like Uruguay, Portugal or the Netherlands.

But at the moment most German players are kind of crap and far weaker than players from England, France or Italy.

Michael Cox did some nice things with his zonal marking stuff in 2010 but at the moment I feel he is kind of outdated.

 

[KeanoMagicHat]

I don't think Michael Cox watches or understands other sports. I've noticed this in some football journalists. They almost get annoyed when people care about other sports. It's incredibly arrogant coming from people who aren't that good at the very sport they're bragging about.

The assumption that because there's more footballers, they must therefore be better would be more plausible if the best national teams were always the most populated countries. Didn't Belgium beat Brazil? How does New Zealand beat England at Rugby?

He has no evidence and is just assuming a viewpoint he likes to think is true actually is true.

This very much so, he annoys me on Twitter for this, we get it, you love football and basically nothing else, but of course he writes this as soon as the Olympics is on and football isn't the main sport for a few weeks of the sporting calendar. I thought this article was very much as an unnecessary pat on the back, "isn't football just great" article. Like the point about Jesse Lingard getting some abuse, but it comes with the territory of playing the most popular game and he was poor for a long time for United, is he supposed to get praise for being a forward who doesn't score in about 30 games?

Lingard enjoys great fame and applause when he does well and fortune the likes of which 99.9% of athletes will never reach, for being quite good at his sport. He's still better known as well in England than the majority of competitors in smaller sports also. I don't know if we're supposed to feel sorry for him or something. Maybe it's a question of respect. But even then I'd guess that Lingard got more praise and local support from West Ham when he was doing well in 6 months than certain Olympic athletes have got in their entire careers.

It's the same with his point about retired Dennis Irwin and Quinton Fortune being really good in an amateur football match. Of course they were! Apply this to any sport or any field where a former retired expert will still generally be much better than an average amateur.

 

[Trequarista10]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

 

[Leftback99]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

This. People are getting confused arguing about athletic ability and the like, it's not what the article is saying.

 

[rhajdu]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

In this case we should see many more football players like Messi and Ronaldo, but there aren't many - or any? - nearly perfect footballers. I would also argue whether football is the most competitive sport. There are many participants, but there are also much more opportunities. In other sports only the best participants can stay and the rest must give up.

 

[Daniel_de_Foe]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

With a degree in philosophy I am obliged to know Tim from the Land of Flowers. Tim was the boy with the best genetic attributes for
tiddlywinks in the history of the world. Unfortunately, poor Tim died in a car accident at the age of four. Seatbelts could have saved him, but at that time, Land of Flowers government believed in personal freedom.

We are on Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy- arguments with this. It is not an academic discussion, it is a scholastic one. I wonder what Cox's opinions regarding the "Angles on a needle point" is. It has nothing to do with the real world.

 

[NoLogo]

In this case we should see many more football players like Messi and Ronaldo, but there aren't many - or any? - nearly perfect footballers. I would also argue whether football is the most competitive sport. There are many participants, but there are also much more opportunities. In other sports only the best participants can stay and the rest must give up.

This is a good point. You also need to factor in how many people can actually compete in the sport at a professional level.

If you argue statistics, then 1000 players who had to get past 100.000 competitors to get a professional contract had just as much competition for a pro contract than lets say 100.000 pro players who were competing against 10.000.000 competitors. In both cases, it's the top 1% who won a professional contract.

But there imo comes another factor into this. How much money is available to actually develop every one of these players because it equates to better training facilities, better training equipment and personal and probably more science behind the training methods employed.

I think the only thing that could really be argued by only factoring in the mass of participants is that the best athlete to ever compete is most likely going to choose football as his game, since percentage wise it's the most popular and most picked* sport among all people.

*We still haven't seen conclusive stats on that though. Popularity of a sport != people actually playing the sport.

 

[TheLiverBird]

There are quite simply way too many variables

It’s a no from me

especially when you look at a few of these examples of sports and athletes when at their best

Cycling:
Bradly Wigins
Chris froome
Chris Hoy
Victoria Pendleton
Alberto Contador
Laura Kenny (Trott)
Geriant Thomas

Tennis:
Andy Murray
Roger Federer
Rafa Nadal
Novak Djokovic
Stan Wawrinka
Zverev
Berrettini

Rugby:
Cheslin Kolbe
Antoine Dupont
Jonny May
Owen Farrel
Semi Radradra

MBA:
LeBron James
Kevin Durant
Kawhi Leonard
Anthony Davis
Stephen Curry

the sports and lists of athletes in those sports could go on and on

NFL
BOXING
GOLF
GYMNASTICS
ATHLETIC SPRINTERS

etc etc

to say footballers are better than their equivalent athletes in their respective sports is muggy, pointless and also a little thick

 

[charlenefan]

Yeah no. All three Federer, Nadal and especially Novak are practically Gods of Tennis at this point.

And are Messi and Ronaldinho not the gods of football?

 

[Trequarista10]

In this case we should see many more football players like Messi and Ronaldo, but there aren't many - or any? - nearly perfect footballers. I would also argue whether football is the most competitive sport. There are many participants, but there are also much more opportunities. In other sports only the best participants can stay and the rest must give up.

Not sure how you came to the first conclusion. There will always be a spectrum of talent. I assume you were referencing my point about darts players making 180s, so I will respond as such. If darts was the most played and competitive sport in the world, you would eventually get multitudes of players who could get 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. The bulk of the best player could get 180 say 99% of the time. You'd probably get one or two freaks who could score 180 99.5% of the time, and they would be the Messi's and Ronald's of darts. (disclaimer as I can already predict someone will get the wrong end of the stick: 99% and 99.5% are speculative examples and the actual % doesn't matter. It could be closer to 80% and 85%. I do not know what is in the realms of possibility, and it is not important).

You're right there are more opportunities in football. Lingard for example may be in roughly the top 300 players in the world. There aren't (I suspect) 300 professional pole vaulters, or 300 professional long jumpers, and if there aren't there aren't many more. It's safe to say Lingard is likely better at football than the 300th best pole vaulter or long jumper is better at pole vaulting or long jump.

Your point about having to give up at other sports is irrelevant. It's not a criticism of the 300th best pole vaulter, and maybe if the 300th best pole vaulter had the same opportunities and training as Lingard they would be a better pole vaulter than Lingard is a footballer. But they didn't, and they aren't, thats the point. Then in addition to that, the 300th best pole vaulter would like be in the top (rough estimate) 1-10% of people who took pole vault competitively. The 300th best footballer is in the top ~0.001% of people who played or attempted to play competitive football. Again, the exact numbers are speculative and the precision of the number is not important, only the disparity. The exact size of the disparity isn't important either, just the fact that there is undoubtedly a disparity.

Further to your point, there are excellent athletes who give up other sports to play football instead because of the opportunities. Phil Neville for example was touted to be one of the best cricketers, but chose football instead. The result is that football is more competitive than other sports who lose their talents, and to reach the top becomes harder in football and less difficult in the other sports.

 

[Trequarista10]

With a degree in philosophy I am obliged to know Tim from the Land of Flowers. Tim was the boy with the best genetic attributes for
tiddlywinks in the history of the world. Unfortunately, poor Tim died in a car accident at the age of four. Seatbelts could have saved him, but at that time, Land of Flowers government believed in personal freedom.

We are on Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy- arguments with this. It is not an academic discussion, it is a scholastic one. I wonder what Cox's opinions regarding the "Angles on a needle point" is. It has nothing to do with the real world.

Tim Flowers was a very good goalkeeper.

Better at goalkeeping than Tiger Woods was at golf? A question only Aristotle could reliably answer.

 

[Dr. StrangeHate]

By OP's logic it is more difficult to become the head waiter at Burj Khalifa than to become Dr Fauci because more people are waiters.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

I was talking about top flight footballers and the elite footballers, not all professional footballers. The top players have to be very talented to stand out as there are so many participants worldwide.

Your clarification enhances my point. Not yours. You can be a sub-elite footballer for the better part of a decade and still earn money. Then Train, improve, make it past whatever arbitrary bar you’re talking about.

Many sports don’t have that. It’s 24/7 eat/shit/sleep that sport or lose any chance of an elite professionally funded career to someone else.

 

[JustAGuest]

Just because football is more popular does not always equal better, football is by far the most accessible sport in the world and the best marketed, as a result, it has the most players playing it, but also it's the easiest one to make a living in.

To play in the squad of a top 5 European League, there are 2,254 available slots, if you bring in other leagues there are probably 10,000-15,000 very well paid and respected professional football roles. You can get paid more to play in League Two (Salford have paid players £300k a year) than you can to win an Olympic medal in certain other sports. Meanwhile, 200 in the world in tennis is nowhere in terms of making a good level. If you excel at a less popular and more complicated sport, it doesn't mean that you are necessarily worse because less people are interested in it.

Michael Cox uses a poor music example there imo, but if you're to compare again to music, just because pop music is more popular than a very complicated heavy guitar solo, and much more people are trying to do it, doesn't necessarily mean all successful pop stars are more talented.

Spot on.

I don't have access to the original article, but using music as an example sounds pretty strange. This entire argument translated to music would be like saying musicians of one genre are better than musicians of another genre, just because the first genre is bigger.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Don't call a suggestion daft, if you're uninformed in a matter and haven't done at least some research into it.
When driving into top speeds F1 drivers experience up to 6G (gravitational force), which translates to around 50Kg of force on the head alone, it requires an amazing level of muscle fitness to be able to drive for two hours under 4-6G force. Also, they experience heartbeat of 170-180 when driving, that is akin to a marathon runner.

For further context, Jenson Button has successfully competed in triathlon, coming 4th out of 500 contestants in London 2010 Triathlon competition,and for some further anecdotal evidence, you might remember Michael Schumacher playing in friendly charity foorball games with the likes of Beckham, Figo, Zidane etc and actually being really good.

So instead of pulling things out of your ass, why don't you check what specialists have to say on the subject?

The irony.

They’re supremely fit. They’re not athletes. Button is slower than I was over the bike and run legs. 4th of 500 amateurs isn’t a big deal. I’ve won my age group in XC, Half Marathon & Small Tri events and I’m bang average in the grand scheme of things.

You’ve also just used Figo and Zidane as reference points for Schumacher. Jesus wept.

A committed gym junkie or decent cross fit type can handle that g force and heart rate. None of that is impressive. It’s training. That’s it.

F1 drivers are world class drivers. Not world class athletes.

 

[Mr.Ridiculous__]

And are Messi and Ronaldinho not the gods of football?

Messi is. Ronaldinho not so much. It's however the 'comfortably better' thing you said that I found fault with.

 

[(...)]

By OP's logic it is more difficult to become the head waiter at Burj Khalifa than to become Dr Fauci because more people are waiters.

That's not what OP is saying. OP's argument can be summed up as Efficiency in selection (due to money involved) + Large Pool of applicants (due to easy access) = Better guarantee to get the best of what humanity can produce.
For your waiter Vs Doctor example, science has a better selection process and a larger pool of applicants than waiters willing to work in Dubai.
Anyway it's a pointless argument, being elite at any sport is hard enough as soon as there is decent money involved for top earners. I tend to agree with OP, but it doesn't mean that other athletes are less deserving.
But it's an interesting thought experiment to watch a sport and wonder if it's truly the best humanity can do. I'd argue that for sports like rugby, tennis, basket-ball, we still have significant room for improvement if we could tap into a larger pool of applicants and if we had a better selection process.

 

[charlenefan]

Messi is. Ronaldinho not so much. It's however the 'comfortably better' thing you said that I found fault with.

Oh you know what damn autocorrect changed Ronaldo to Ronaldinho, I'd of never mentioned him

 

[NasirTimothy]

Not at all, there are quite a lot of sports that are more physical demanding and challenging than football. The thing with football is that is very accessible so that contributes to having a really big pool of talent but overall they're not better athletes compared to other sports.

Yes

 

[NasirTimothy]

Okay let's use your example but apply the logic correctly.

Instead of 10 people in the first race there are 1 billion people. Instead of 5 people in the second race there are 1 million.

Which race is it easier to finish in the first 25 people?

That is not applying the logic correctly. Football is not played by a billion people (it’s an exaggeration to say that, which we use to argue points, but it’s not actually accurate) and most other top sports (basketball, volleyball, golf, tennis, badminton etc) are played by a lot more than a million people. The numbers that I stated are more likely to be theoretically correct because a 2-1 difference is closer to the truth than billion-million disparity. In fact, are we even sure that football has more participants than cricket, volleyball etc? I’ve yet to see any actual evidence of this. It seems that it would be the case but are we confusing it’s popularity with spectators with the number of actual participants? There’s a helluva lot of people playing cricket in Asia for example.

 

[Tarrou]

That is not applying the logic correctly. Football is not played by a billion people (it’s an exaggeration to say that, which we use to argue points, but it’s not actually accurate) and most other top sports (basketball, volleyball, golf, tennis, badminton etc) are played by a lot more than a million people. The numbers that I stated are more likely to be theoretically correct because a 2-1 difference is closer to the truth than billion-million disparity. In fact, are we even sure that football has more participants than cricket, volleyball etc? I’ve yet to see any actual evidence of this. It seems that it would be the case but are we confusing it’s popularity with spectators with the number of actual participants? There’s a helluva lot of people playing cricket in Asia for example.

It's an example to illustrate a point, the proportions are not supposed to be accurate. Just like your example with five and ten people wasn't.

Now, what is your answer?

 

[11101]

It depends on the definition of athlete. Are they the fittest, or the strongest, then obviously not. They don't need to be in such a skill dominant sport.

Are they the best athletes as in the people who stand out the most then obviously yes. It's simple arithmetic. Forgetting ages, of 3.5 billion men in the world, most of them have kicked a ball at some point and know whether they like it and are any good at it. The ones who are good go to compete against other and to rise to the top you must be the best out of all those people. Messi is #1 of approximately 3.5 billion. Daniele Garozo is the #1 in fencing out of what, a few thousand people who have ever tried it? If a billion people all of a sudden took up fencing, it wouldn't be long before he was no longer the best.

The only sport that can really compete with football would be running. Everybody has run as fast as they can at some point in their lives. You know without a doubt that Usain Bolt is the fastest man alive.

 

[NasirTimothy]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

We’re not missing the point, you’re not thinking about it hard enough, I would respectfully submit.

Let’s leave aside the difficulty of the various sports for argument’s sake. As others have astutely pointed out, if it’s just about numbers, then why don’t the football countries with the most people and participants always produce the best players or National sides? Football is apparently more popular in China and Mexico than anywhere else.

Why can’t England produce a player that actually has skill? After all, the top English talent is supposedly beating out tens of millions of other people to get to the top and yet there’s nary a Cruyff among them (Dutch population: 17 million). Yes I know that the way footballers are taught and trained in the two countries is different, but it’s all about the number of participants, right? There were surely more people playing football in England in the 60s and 70s than there were in Holland and yet there wasn’t a player reared in England that was fit to lace Cruyff’s boots.

Secondly, I’ve yet to see someone provide actual verifiable stats re participants in the various sports (apologies if I’ve missed this in one of the earlier posts). Apparently FIFA estimates 250 million in football; there are sports like volleyball which claim to have far more. Cricket also has tremendous numbers, though concentrated in a handful of countries.

Are we sure we’re not confusing the popularity of football (re spectators) with the actual number of participants?

Any answers or actual statistics would be most welcome.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

By OP's logic it is more difficult to become the head waiter at Burj Khalifa than to become Dr Fauci because more people are waiters.

It's more that if 100 times more medical students started to choose to specialise in immunology would you then be more likely to find more immunologists of the caliber of Dr Fauci?

 

[mancan92]

No. It's only as easy as they want it to be.

That's the point other sports don't have that luxury. Gymnasts for example have a certain lifestyle and it's strict. You have to follow it or your out.

 

[Eplel]

The irony.

They’re supremely fit. They’re not athletes. Button is slower than I was over the bike and run legs. 4th of 500 amateurs isn’t a big deal. I’ve won my age group in XC, Half Marathon & Small Tri events and I’m bang average in the grand scheme of things.

You’ve also just used Figo and Zidane as reference points for Schumacher. Jesus wept.

A committed gym junkie or decent cross fit type can handle that g force and heart rate. None of that is impressive. It’s training. That’s it.

F1 drivers are world class drivers. Not world class athletes.

An athlete is someone who competes in a physical contest for a prize. And the physical aspect of F1 driving is extremely demanding, so they are athletes. Same goes for equastrians.
You can pull things through your ass all day, but you can't change the definition of things, because you don't like them. Do some research next time before you talk like a moron.



https://blog.betway.com/formula-1/how-fit-are-formula-1-drivers-compared-to-other-elite-athletes/
https://www.physioroom.com/info/how-fit-are-formula-1-drivers/

 

[The holy trinity 68]

Depends on the sport.

 

[NasirTimothy]

It's an example to illustrate a point, the proportions are not supposed to be accurate. Just like your example with five and ten people wasn't.

Now, what is your answer?

No. My example is more accurate than yours because it reflects percentages that are more likely. You might as well ask, what’s easier to win, a race where you compete against 500 people or 5 billion people? Because that’s essentially what you’ve done. My point is that it might be harder to win something with half the competitors where the actual activity is tougher. You’ve given an example with a thousand times more competitors. That’s just not the reality of football v every other sport (and Cox was adamant that footballers are better than those in every other sport).

 

[mancan92]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

But his whole argument falls apart as soon as you understand that teams like Portugal with about a quarter of the population of England has a better international record regulardless of having less people therefore less competition

 

[Stacks]

On a list I saw Basketball were the top athletes but I think footballers cover the most ground, did the fastest sprint time etc

 

[Lynty]

Yes, quite comfortably so compared to most mainstream supports.

I think there are some outliers e.g. gymnastics or ballet (i guess that's an art not a sport) where the training regimes are borderline physical and mental abuse.

 

[Norris]

I think maybe he means in terms of share numbers of amateur and professional footballers.

From a FIFA report, there are 3,903 professional clubs world wide, and 128,983 professional players worldwide Ref (https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/a59132e138824c1c/original/jlr5corccbsef4n4brde.pdf)

Now these are just clubs and players that meet FIFA’s definition of “professional” now imagine all the full time clubs that fifa ignored or the part time and amateur clubs that still make up the football pyramid.

So while I don’t know if it’s true, I do know that the players at the elite level must have beaten tens of millions world wide. I don’t think there’s the same level of competition in other sports.

In terms of sheer numbers, absolutely. It's the most popular sport in the world, so that's a given that an increased footprint in the world is likely to lead to an increase of "Professional" footballers.

But if the question is if GOAT Player A from Football is athletically greater or even better at football than GOAT Player from say basketball or tennis etc, I'd say it's quite hard to compare. Huge numbers alone cannot ensure such superiority.

 

[OnlyTwoDaSilvas]

I don't think it could ever be answered definitively, but Cox has gone ahead and done so anyway. It's an interesting conversation, but it's been posed by Cox in a reductive way, as if there is no conversation to be had, because he's already decided.

But just talking about the top flight and the top level of sports, rather than the quantity of people playing those sports, can you really say the best footballers are better than the best NFL players, or the best ice hockey players? Anyone performing at an elite level at any sport is unbelievably skilled, both with natural talent, genetics and also ability gained through their own training and improvement. To measure one sport against another doesn't seem possible, and just saying 'football is best' is incredibly dismissive of many, many other sporting disciplines and the skill required, regardless of quantity of competitors.

Is Lionel Messi better at football than, say, Connor McDavid is at hockey, just because he has to overtake more footballers to get to the top? It seems a daft question anyway, but I don't see how the answer can just be definitively yes. Sticking with hockey as an example, an elite hockey player has to be exceptionally good at both the fundamentals and skating. Skating is harder than running and takes years to master before you can even think about holding a hockey stick. If you're fit and able bodied, you can step on grass and run, and immediately start playing football, albeit badly.

Standing out in a sport is something that impacts pretty much every discipline. I think standing out in American Football must be incredibly difficult, particularly if you're a tackle or a centre or something. Outside of throwing and receiving, a lot of players aren't in a position to be expressive, you're just doing exactly what you're told to carry out a very limited function and you're perhaps more at the mercy of the quality of the coaching. Yet a good footballer can still standout in a bad team or under a bad coach.

I'm not suggesting hockey and American football players are better, but just that a lot of factors are dismissed which you could go through a number of sports in a similar manner, and I'd argue there's more to it than how many people play the game.

 

[Gio]

Most people seem to be missing the point.

If tiddlywinks was by far the most played and competitive sports in the world, the best tiddlywinks players would be the best. As in, the worlds best tiddlywinks players would be better at tiddlywinks than the best rugbys player are good at rugby, or the best swimmers are good at swimming. It's not about how hard a sport is or how hard individuals work, it's just stats.

I'll use darts as an example as an easy sport as I don't actually know what tiddlywinks is. If darts was the most played sport with the best players being able to earn huge contracts, then you would eventually get darts players who could score 180 with 3 darts close to 100% of the time. Its just a numbers game.

There is very little point in comparing the skill sets of one sport to another.

This.

But his whole argument falls apart as soon as you understand that teams like Portugal with about a quarter of the population of England has a better international record regulardless of having less people therefore less competition

Portugal don't have a better international record than England. Of course you're going to get variations from team to team, because the variables are much finer when it boils down to a handful of individuals. Portugal are a good example in this respect if you look at how influential Mozambique-born Eusebio was in the 1966 team. But if we look beyond shorter-term fluctuations, and compare their historical records there's a clear distinction where England have 15 World Cup appearances to Portugal's 7, and then 10 Euros appearances to Portugal's 8.

To beef up the numbers more, we could extend the comparison into the club game, and compare what countries were able to produce when 90% of the squad were domestic players, for example before 1992. For European Cups the wins are split England 11-3 Portugal, UEFA Cup it's 5-0, and the Cup Winners Cup it's 6-1.

Clearly the over-performance of the likes of Portugal, Holland and Uruguay owes much to the other factors like training, facilities, culture, competing sports, etc, but there's a strong link between the weight of numbers of the big footballing nations and their sustained success at the top end of the game. To give another example, there has been no real difference between England and Scotland in terms of these other factors, but their 10x larger pool of players to draw upon has ensured more consistency at the very top.

That isn't even true for football itself. You have to play football in a semiprofessional environment. It' not the Nineties you won't become a professional footballer if you still playing on the streets at the age of ten.
The biggest football association in the world is the DFB(German Football Association) with oder 7 Million Members. By this logic it has the largest pool of players in a semiprofessional environment and therefore German players should dominate the football world like China in table tennis. Far far better than smaller nations like Uruguay, Portugal or the Netherlands.

But at the moment most German players are kind of crap and far weaker than players from England, France or Italy.

Michael Cox did some nice things with his zonal marking stuff in 2010 but at the moment I feel he is kind of outdated.

Germany are the second most successful international team of all time.

 

[Tarrou]

No. My example is more accurate than yours because it reflects percentages that are more likely. You might as well ask, what’s easier to win, a race where you compete against 500 people or 5 billion people? Because that’s essentially what you’ve done. My point is that it might be harder to win something with half the competitors where the actual activity is tougher. You’ve given an example with a thousand times more competitors. That’s just not the reality of football v every other sport (and Cox was adamant that footballers are better than those in every other sport).

let's change the numbers if thats whats bothering you.

sport one (1 billion people)
sport two (0.5 billion people)

which sport is it easier to be in the best 25 in the world in?