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

JPRouve

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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?
It depends on how you are supposed to climb rankings and what the rankings represent. Your point would be definitely true for Judos or even Tennis due to the fact that in order to climb rankings you actually have to compete and beat the best regularly, in football there are no objective or accurate ways to rank players and the best players don't actually face each others that often.

Football is probably the most difficulty sports to become professional due to simple statistics but when you are a professional, talent and competition are more deluted than in many other sports. I lean toward the idea that in order to answer this question you would have to determine which athletes face the denser level of competition on a regular basis, because in those sports in order to be successful you need to coax everything that you have on a regular basis which isn't the case in Football.
 
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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.
You’re definitely correct… there is no tangible measurement. Thinking about it, I get the feeling the journo who wrote it did so to be controversial and get comments and traffic on his socials/web page etc
 

BusbyMalone

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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.
Not sure if you've seen him on Twitter when Rugby enters the conversation. He becomes almost pathological when it comes to dismissing it and those who like it. I can only assume he got bullied or something by the rugby lads during his school days. Because it's bizarre.

And I do agree. He's ultimately writing an opinion piece (which is fine) but he's passing it off as fact. Which is why he's getting incredibly defensive by any dissenting voices. I think it's an interesting discussion (hence why I posted it) but he's literally laughing at people bringing up other suggestions because the possibility of him being wrong is so absurd to him. That's what I don't like.
 

tomaldinho1

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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?
This is too simplistic.

Football is participated in en masse but, if you aren't being picked up by an academy at an early age, it is highly unlikely you'll be making it to professional level. There's almost two completely different groups of participants, those in academies versus the general populace. I don't really see how you can compare them - one group train multiple times a day, the other maybe once a week with a game at the weekend. More accurate would be to look at academy kids only and the % who make it to professional from there because the majority of kids who play football and make up the bulk of the numbers aren't ever in the running in the first place and just end up on the caf, preaching about tactics and playing football at the weekends socially.

Contrast that to Rugby, which contains a heavy private school contingent - better training, better coaching, better facilities - and so even though there are far fewer participants, if a higher percentage of those participants all have a more equal playing field, does that not make it technically harder to succeed?

i.e. which is more competitive?
  1. 50,000 kids play football and 2,000 of those have proper coaching and access to the best facilities.
  2. 10,000 kids play rugby and 5,000 of those have proper coaching and access to the best facilities.
FYI I'm not hug up on Rugby as the example, that can be interchanged, but important to factor in the difference between purely looking at total numbers & Rugby an interesting one as such a private school dominated sport.
 

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It depends on how you are supposed to climb rankings and what the rankings represent. Your point would be definitely true for Judos or even Tennis due to the fact that in order to climb rankings you actually have to compete and beat the best regularly, in football there are no objective or accurate ways to rank players and the best players don't actually face each others that often.

Football is probably the most difficulty sports to become professional due to simple statistics but when you are a professional, talent and competition are more deluted than in many other sports. I lean toward the idea that in order to answer this question you would have to determine which athletes face the denser level of competition on a regular basis, because in those sports in order to be successful you need to coax everything that you have on a regular basis which isn't the case in Football.
it's not about rankings though it's just about who is best

in some sports the 'top 25' or whatever might be more subjective, but the fact that a top 25 exists is still true

professional sports filter the best to the top by themselves, it is not a perfect system by any stretch.. but by and large they all do this
 
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Tarrou

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This is too simplistic.

Football is participated in en masse but, if you aren't being picked up by an academy at an early age, it is highly unlikely you'll be making it to professional level. There's almost two completely different groups of participants, those in academies versus the general populace. I don't really see how you can compare them - one group train multiple times a day, the other maybe once a week with a game at the weekend. More accurate would be to look at academy kids only and the % who make it to professional from there because the majority of kids who play football and make up the bulk of the numbers aren't ever in the running in the first place and just end up on the caf, preaching about tactics and playing football at the weekends socially.

Contrast that to Rugby, which contains a heavy private school contingent - better training, better coaching, better facilities - and so even though there are far fewer participants, if a higher percentage of those participants all have a more equal playing field, does that not make it technically harder to succeed?

i.e. which is more competitive?

  1. 50,000 kids play football and 2,000 of those have proper coaching and access to the best facilities.
  2. 10,000 kids play rugby and 5,000 of those have proper coaching and access to the best facilities.
FYI I'm not hug up on Rugby as the example, that can be interchanged, but important to factor in the difference between purely looking at total numbers & Rugby an interesting one as such a private school dominated sport.
I really like your point of view here and it's given me pause for thought. It would be better if Rugby was number two though, but it's way off.

so doesn't it actually reinforce the answer as football because the money in the game is so vast, and football is therefore the sport with best access to facilities as well?

if the next sport was close then you could have a more nuanced discussion on the two - but I don't think it is, is it? I have no idea on that but the discussion is kinda difficult without accurate data (which I doubt is available)
 

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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 the game, 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.
Did also come to think about the comparison between McDavid and Messi. McDavid is head and shoulders above the rest as we speak(Crosby seems to have declined a bit), where his point production is insane.

He’s always a joy to watch out of an athletic standpoint, being able to do what he does with the puck with the speed on his skates and agility of his hands is remarkable. Also hasn’t hit his prime(think he’s 22-23?)

Always liked this quote from Brendan Shanahan describing the game:

Is hockey hard? I don't know, you tell me. We need to have the strength and power of a football player, the stamina of a marathon runner, and the concentration of a brain surgeon. But we need to put all this together while moving at high speeds on a cold and slippery surface while 5 other guys use clubs to try and kill us.

Oh yeah, did I mention that this whole time we're standing on blades 1/8 of an inch thick? Is ice hockey hard? I don't know, you tell me. Next question
 

JPRouve

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it's not about rankings though it's just about who is best

in some sports the 'top 25' or whatever might be more subjective, but the fact that a top 25 exists is still true

professional sports filter the best to the top by themselves, it is not a perfect system by any stretch.. but by and large they all do this
Who is the best is a ranking, if you have a top 25 then you are ranking and tiering players.You can't really try to base an argument on how easy it is to be in a top 25 and tell me that your argument isn't partially about ranking.

And my point is that the top 25 in Football doesn't compete against the best as often than the top 25 in many other sports. For me one of the issues with Football when we try to determine who has the best athletes is that if you follow the logic that iron sharpens iron then Football is at a disadvantage because due to its popularity the level is actually very diluted and there is a relatively big gap between what we deem top players, they don't face or push others as much as in other sports and you don't actually need to master every aspects of the game in order to be considered a top player.

Now if you take Rugby as an example, due to the concentration of talent at the top, top players face each others on almost a weekly basis, any flaw is and will be exposed and that's just at club level. Then you have yearly annual International tournaments that see the best among an already concentrated pool of player face each others. And that applies to athleticism and most Martial Arts too.

So to me the point that you made is very true when you consider the floor level of professional football, the entry is more difficult than in any other sport due to the sheer amount of candidates with circumstances and luck playing a huge part but when you judge professional Football itself, it's not as competitive, a Super League could change that though and will be interesting to see if players reach a new level.
 

KeanoMagicHat

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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?
I think at that level of population or participation it really is much of amuchness. Is it harder to be great at football in Netherlands or Phillippines? (Phillippines 6 times the population of Netherlands)? Netherlands. Population/participation only really kicks in when you're comparing against really small populations. Hence why Croatia, Uruguay, Netherlands, Belgium etc can have really good football teams and players, but Iceland, Luxembourg etc can be way ahead of the game but are always going to have limitations with their populations and San Marino, Liechtenstein really have no chance at all.

You need a certain level of participants/population to really compete. But once you hit a certain threshold, the differences are minimal. Hence the tiddlywinks vs football example, tiddlywinks probably doesn't have enough participants to attract the same talent as football. But let's say basketball or tennis, there are more than enough people playing it around the world to have a big enough talent field to suggest the best are as good as football's best.

Quantity does not always mean quality.
 

Tarrou

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Who is the best is a ranking, if you have a top 25 then you are ranking and tiering players.You can't really try to base an argument on how easy it is to be in a top 25 and tell me that your argument isn't partially about ranking.
fair enough lets just agree to disagree then, because that is exactly what I'm doing
 

JPRouve

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fair enough lets just agree to disagree then, because that is exactly what I'm doing
That's fine but it's disappointing that you ignore the rest of the post which isn't about ranking.
 

Tarrou

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That's fine but it's disappointing that you ignore the rest of the post which isn't about ranking.
apologies

I did read it of course and you make some good points, just felt if we disagree on a fundamental basis for the argument it's kinda futile for me to continue
 

JPRouve

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apologies

I did read it of course and you make some good points, just felt if we disagree on a fundamental basis for the argument it's kinda futile for me to continue
Understood, I should have mentioned that I got your initial point and was only quibbling about the "top 25" question which I thought didn't fit with your overall point.
 

rhajdu

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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.
I don't think that your analogy is correct. If football is the most played and competitive sport in the world and the world works as your analogy then we should have more footballers who are nearly perfect, but it doesn't work that way. Also, Lingard might be the 300th best footballer and better than the 300th best pole vaulter who might not even exist as there are no opportunities for that much pole vaulter. Only the best pole vaulters can focus on to be the very best pole vaulter.

So, I don't think that the best footballers are better than the best pole vaulters. In fact, I would argue that football gives place to complacency. You don't have to give your all and improve all the time, because you already earned enough money for a lifetime. You can have an inappropriate lifestyle (e.g. Rooney) and still broke records. It is relatively comfortable and safe environment. You can have bad form for an extended period, you can have injuries and still taken care of. In other sports you have less competition because it is much harder to compete.

I would also add that individual sports are much harder mentally. If you are not on top of your game, you will lose. There won't be another topflight footballer who save you. You have to perform, that's your only option.

---

However, if this conversation is about the chances to find the most talented footballer or pole vaulter among the whole population then I agree that you have better chances to find the most talented footballer. He might still not make it as talent is only a thing, but he might overtake Messi one day - who supposed to be one of the best footballers and dominated the last 10+ years along with Ronaldo.

It still seems pointless to tell Áron Szilágyi that he is the best sabre fencer, but theoretically there could be someone who would be even better. In this case you can go on and tell everyone that "you might won the Nobel Prize or the Academy Award or any individual prize, but there is a slight / moderate / strong chance that someone would be even better if she/he would give it a go."
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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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/
Don’t go calling names like a child. Nor is it good to tell someone to do some research at the same time you’re misspelling equestrian.

F1 drivers are fit. But they’re embarrassing themselves if they try to compete in an athletic endeavour against athletes.

If you want to hold the drivers to a higher standard, cool. But you’re speaking with someone that’s spent a bit of time around F1. They’re nothing special athletically and they don’t profess to be either. They train hard to drive a car. You or I could get to their level of athleticism very easily.
 

JPRouve

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Don’t go calling names like a child. Nor is it good to tell someone to do some research at the same time you’re misspelling equestrian.

F1 drivers are fit. But they’re embarrassing themselves if they try to compete in an athletic endeavour against athletes.

If you want to hold the drivers to a higher standard, cool. But you’re speaking with someone that’s spent a bit of time around F1. They’re nothing special athletically and they don’t profess to be either. They train hard to drive a car. You or I could get to their level of athleticism very easily.
While you are most likely right there are exceptions with some athletes doing other sports during the offseason. For example I seem to remember that one of the top drivers was also competing in Triathlon.
 

Tom Cato

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So thought I would create this thread which is inspired by this article by Michael Cox. Seems to have stirred up some debate on Twitter (who would have thought!) In true Michael Cox style, he is very dismissive and patronizing (not to mention strangely angry) at any dissenting voices.

The argument he seems to be making is that the competition is so strong in football, that to truly stand out as elite you have to be really special. So special, in fact, that you don't quite see it in other sport to the same degree.

Somebody listed a few sport stars who would disagree, and Michael countered with: "Messi is better at football than all of those are at their sports”

So it’s that type of argument.

Thoughts?

Cheap suit argument to make when Football is the biggest sport in the world, and has the most competiiton for the spots in the top divisions.

But you have a player like Connor McDavid who is currently by some distance the best player in the NHL. There are around 1.7 million registeed ice hockey players in the world. The NHL has about 620 total roster sports in the league.

By comparison, assuming that football has 250 million registered players. To ensure a player has a spot in the Premier League, you have around 1:200 times the odds of succeeding in the Premier League, compared to being the best player in the NHL.

That is of course a bad way of reading statistics and completely bad faith, a bit like what Micahel Cox is doing here. He's making an argument without substance other than strength in numbers.

A more fair representation would be something like regional comparisons, for example per country. There are fewer competitors in football in the USA vs American Football that host around 6 million players. Going by Micahel's argument: In the US, American Football is a much harder and competetive sport than football, so Tom Brady is better than everyone in both sports.

Overall, I dont think you can make a fair argument at all to any sport that has competitors in the millions. Saying Leo Messi is better at his sport than Michael Jordan was at his sport, is an impossible argument.

WHY does this quesiton need to be asked? It doesn't, he just wants clicks and a paycheck.
 

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I think the fysique, travelling, schedule, intensity of NBA makes it require more overall from the altletes than pro footballers..

I think for Ice Ice Skaters, Swimmers. Atlethics, Gymnasts the differences for individuals are so small that is requires more from individuals to push everything out of themsleves more than pro footballers..
 

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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?
Whichever one requires the least physical exertion, dedication, sacrifice, money and external support. Not necessarily the one with the least participants.
 

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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?
Depends which one you're better at, do more practice, have the infrastructure to compete and improve yourself. Its not a raw numbers game, or else India and China would win at every sport.
 

Glorio

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I think the fysique, travelling, schedule, intensity of NBA makes it require more overall from the altletes than pro footballers..

I think for Ice Ice Skaters, Swimmers. Atlethics, Gymnasts the differences for individuals are so small that is requires more from individuals to push everything out of themsleves more than pro footballers..

It's a difficult thing to compare anyhow, but what comes to mind especially as you mentioned basketball is this: Imagine a top-level pro basketball player getting by with one obviously weaker arm than the other. It's unheard of.

Not saying basketball players may not have a stronger hand, but from the basics, your coaches will make you train the other so you can go both ways without fuss in top level matches. When talking about stars in that sport, whether you're right or left handed rarely comes up.

With football on the other hand a player comfortable with both feet is a rarity I feel. While I say all this, I appreciate that the arms are naturally more easy to maneuver than feet (which do a lot already to keep us balanced all the time)
 

JPRouve

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It's a difficult thing to compare anyhow, but what comes to mind especially as you mentioned basketball is this: Imagine a top-level pro basketball player getting by with one obviously weaker arm than the other. It's unheard of.

Not saying basketball players may not have a stronger hand, but from the basics, your coaches will make you train the other so you can go both ways without fuss in top level matches. When talking about stars in that sport, whether you're right or left handed rarely comes up.

With football on the other hand a player comfortable with both feet is a rarity I feel. While I say all this, I appreciate that the arms are naturally more easy to maneuver than feet (which do a lot already to keep us balanced all the time)
You can be drafted with that weakness but you will have to fix it otherwise there is next to no chance to be a valuable player. On the same theme I have a friend who was thrown out of a Rugby academy because he didn't fix his weaknesses when it came to pass the ball at the required level with either hands, they did tell him to work on it during summer and then gave him almost a year.
 

Eric_the_Red99

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First of all, this is a pretty pointless debate seeing as it’s not really possible to definitively compare skill levels between completely different sports.

But people keep raising the point that far more people play football, therefore it’s so much harder for any one individual to reach the highest levels. I’d suggest that you could turn that argument on its head and say that one of the reasons why football is so popular is that it’s one of the easiest sports to achieve basic competence in.

Other sports, ice hockey for example, have higher entry requirements (ie you have to be able to skate *and* hit a puck).

So from that point of view, it’s arguably easier for someone to achieve a given level of competence in football than in comparable sports.
 
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NasirTimothy

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Not sure if you've seen him on Twitter when Rugby enters the conversation. He becomes almost pathological when it comes to dismissing it and those who like it. I can only assume he got bullied or something by the rugby lads during his school days. Because it's bizarre.

And I do agree. He's ultimately writing an opinion piece (which is fine) but he's passing it off as fact. Which is why he's getting incredibly defensive by any dissenting voices. I think it's an interesting discussion (hence why I posted it) but he's literally laughing at people bringing up other suggestions because the possibility of him being wrong is so absurd to him. That's what I don't like.
Yes if you look at his spats with the other twitter peeps, he’s not willing to accept that the debate is far more nuanced than he is making out. Which just makes him seem a bit dim. Not to mention that he has no statistical evidence (for those who have read the article, does he actually present any in that?) and no objective way to define terms (‘sport’, ‘better’, ‘participant’ etc.)
 

tomaldinho1

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I really like your point of view here and it's given me pause for thought. It would be better if Rugby was number two though, but it's way off.

so doesn't it actually reinforce the answer as football because the money in the game is so vast, and football is therefore the sport with best access to facilities as well?

if the next sport was close then you could have a more nuanced discussion on the two - but I don't think it is, is it? I have no idea on that but the discussion is kinda difficult without accurate data (which I doubt is available)
It's an impossible question really!

I'm not sure on the money side - in the same way it's not just about the quantity of participants, it all depends where that money goes. I grew up in the UK and I'm not sure how much money lower league clubs (i.e not professional) and amateurs really see & they make up the bulk of the numbers. If UK football clubs get x amount of £££ per year and that's all hoovered up by professional clubs and their academies, I'm not sure how relevant it is to the general populace side of the argument. It highlights the gap between what I'll call the 'potential' professional football players & the rest.

That's why a private school (and maybe this is specific to the UK) sport like Rugby is interesting because there are far less participants but I'd argue a huge % have access to the best, or at least elite level, equipment and coaching because of how much money goes into sports in the private school sector in the UK. That's a separate revenue stream to any money that filters down from the league as well - although the flip side is, as you say, there is less money overall in Rugby although it's potentially not spread as thin given there aren't a huge amount of professional clubs. Football doesn't really have this second stream of income, you either get signed up into an academy and access the 'level playing field' or you don't - it's not really invested in at school level.

The one I suspect might turn out to be most competitive/easiest to measure is American Football because you have a huge population playing a popular sport and a huge, relatively equal college system (assuming you get into the college) - I'm assuming you could see the exact number of players who come through every year and also assume they have all been in comparable environments for training.

I was also thinking of golf because it has a huge number of participants but I'd use the same argument against it that I did for football - most of the guys who bump the numbers up aren't doing it because they are in the running to be professional, most are doing it socially and shouldn't really factor in.
 

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They're weak mentally in my eyes compared to olympians who only have 1 slim window to perform every few years.
Most Olympic disciplines have their own national, continental and world championchips and cups, and often some form of league or season-long competition.

True, the Olympics is often the pinnacle of their sport, and it only comes around every four years, but they perform every year, and do certainly have chances to win medals and recognition in between Olympic Games.
 

Tarrou

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Whichever one requires the least physical exertion, dedication, sacrifice, money and external support. Not necessarily the one with the least participants.
thank you for your answer.

so let's take physical exertion as an example. Whichever challenge requires the least physical exertion, is the easiest to be in the top 25, correct?

why do you think so?

same question for all/any of your variables if you prefer but I thought it better to keep the discussion focused.

I'm not trying to be clever here I genuinely can't think why that would be the case.
 

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thank you for your answer.

so let's take physical exertion as an example. Whichever challenge requires the least physical exertion, is the easiest to be in the top 25, correct?

why do you think so?

same question for all/any of your variables if you prefer but I thought it better to keep the discussion focused.

I'm not trying to be clever here I genuinely can't think why that would be the case.
I'm not sure I understand.

As for the question in the title: "Are top flight footballers better than equivalent athletes from other sports?"

First you have to define "better at what?"


If the answer is better at the sport itself? Then you can do some basic statistical analysis of some of the more meaningful stats by comparing the stats of the "best" to the average performance (seeing how many standard deviations higher they are to the average). There is the second problem. Average of what? Average of all professionals for the sport? Then football is at a disadvantage as stats really can't be compared across leagues.

For for the stat "goals scored" limiting to La Liga compared to the average striker in La Liga, Messi and Ronaldo are about 2-3 standard deviations higher I'd guess. To my knowledge the "best of their sport" statistically is probably Don Bradman as his career average is way higher than the mean average of even the best batsmen.
 

Loony BoB

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This entire thread is painful to read. Anyone who thinks that they're a better athlete just because more people play it is ridiculous. If everyone in the world played snooker I wouldn't argue that snooker players are the peak of athleticism. It's genuinely bizarre.

Football is a game which requires mental intelligence, tactical knowledge, spatial awareness, communication, understanding of the wind, things like this. None of these things have anything to do with being an athlete, but they are all absolutely required. A less than par athlete can still excel at football if he makes up for it in other areas. Lionel Messi is not someone I would consider to be a better physical specimen or athlete than anyone else who pushes themselves to the limit physically, be it in gymnastics, rugby, tennis, triathlon, whatever. It's about being a footballer. You can get all kinds of physical types in football that do well. Ronaldo and Messi aren't exactly carbon copies of each other are they? Yes, athleticism is a key part to being the best footballer in the world, but it's not pure athleticism. Other sports out there are more strenuous on the body. I'd be very interested to see how many of the top footballers in the world would compete with the top triathlon, pentathlon and decathlon athletes. All of those sports are pure athleticism.

Posting this thread in a football forum was always going to give a huge bias towards football from the results. But yeah, for me, every athlete has their specialty. If Ronaldo wasn't good at kicking a ball he'd be a rubbish footballer, but still an incredible athlete, I'm sure, but I don't think he'd be the next Usain Bolt by default. In the end, athleticism is purely physical, ergo, the more physical a sport is - and I'm not talking about how they can twist their foot around a ball and direct it in a specific direction, I'm talking about peak physical contest - the better the athletes will tend to be. But in the end, it'll be apples and oranges no matter how you compare sports, because quite frankly they are all specialties. Football is about the specialty of ball movement with the foot combined with speed, stamina and limited strength checks. Rugby is about the specialty of ball movement with the hands combined with durability, speed, stamina and strength checks, with limited foot checks. Tennis is about the specialty of racquet use with primarily hand-eye co-ordination, speed, aerobics, strength and stamina checks. Boxing is about durability, strength, stamina and hand-eye co-ordination.

Honestly this is like saying that someone who speaks Mandarin is better at language than anyone because more people speak Mandarin than any other language.

You can pay a journalist, but you can't buy intelligence.
 

Tarrou

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This entire thread is painful to read. Anyone who thinks that they're a better athlete just because more people play it is ridiculous. If everyone in the world played snooker I wouldn't argue that snooker players are the peak of athleticism. It's genuinely bizarre.

Your example doesn't work because Snooker doesn't require athleticism. Most of the most popular sports in the world do require it which is why they are being compared.

Honestly this is like saying that someone who speaks Mandarin is better at language than anyone because more people speak Mandarin than any other language.

You can pay a journalist, but you can't buy intelligence.

If speaking Mandarin was a competition with an entire ecosystem built around it that rewards the best speakers of Mandarin. And the same thing existed for people who speak Dutch. The level of sheer excellence in the best Mandarin speakers would be higher. This of course doesn't exist because speaking Mandarin is boring to watch and the skill-gap is way too small for such an ecosystem to exist.
 

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thank you for your answer.

so let's take physical exertion as an example. Whichever challenge requires the least physical exertion, is the easiest to be in the top 25, correct?

why do you think so?

same question for all/any of your variables if you prefer but I thought it better to keep the discussion focused.

I'm not trying to be clever here I genuinely can't think why that would be the case.
Because the harder a toll it takes on your body, the harder it is to excel, persevere and do everything necessary to get to the absolute pinnacle of the sport.
 

NasirTimothy

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Your example doesn't work because Snooker doesn't require athleticism. Most of the most popular sports in the world do require it which is why they are being compared.




If speaking Mandarin was a competition with an entire ecosystem built around it that rewards the best speakers of Mandarin. And the same thing existed for people who speak Dutch. The level of sheer excellence in the best Mandarin speakers would be higher. This of course doesn't exist because speaking Mandarin is boring to watch and the skill-gap is way too small for such an ecosystem to exist.
Except that the Mandarin speakers’ competition would be a team sport and the Dutch speakers competition may be an individual sport, so you wouldn’t be able to compare. And there’d be lots of languages like Spanish and English which have numbers that are almost as great and so there’d be no effective way to distinguish between them in terms of competence.

It’s impossible to judge this accurately and Cox probably knows this. He’s just kicking back against the thing that always happens during the Olympics, which is bitter, jealous people negatively comparing footballers with Olympic athletes.

I also find that annoying because I certainly don’t begrudge a vanishingly small number of working class people getting paid reasonably well (in the grand scheme of things: there’s no Jeff Bezoses on the football pitch) for playing a game that generates a LOT of money.

I just don’t think that you should go the the other extreme of saying ‘footballers are in fact better than all other sportspeople’. That cannot be determined, using numbers or anything else.
 

Tarrou

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Except that the Mandarin speakers’ competition would be a team sport and the Dutch speakers competition may be an individual sport, so you wouldn’t be able to compare. And there’d be lots of languages like Spanish and English which have numbers that are almost as great and so there’d be no effective way to distinguish between them in terms of competence.

It’s impossible to judge this accurately and Cox probably knows this. He’s just kicking back against the thing that always happens during the Olympics, which is bitter, jealous people negatively comparing footballers with Olympic athletes.

I also find that annoying because I certainly don’t begrudge a vanishingly small number of working class people getting paid reasonably well (in the grand scheme of things: there’s no Jeff Bezoses on the football pitch) for playing a game that generates a LOT of money.

I just don’t think that you should go the the other extreme of saying ‘footballers are in fact better than all other sportspeople’. That cannot be determined, using numbers or anything else.
On this we agree, it's very complex. So let's leave it at that. Thanks for the discussion.
 

harms

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It’s quite similar to era comparisons in my book. Better training regimes, tactics, the size of the talent pool etc. affect the average level of football players, not the top individual talents.

1000th best footballer would most likely be better at football than 1000th best basketball/cricket/tennis player is at their sport, but it’s impossible to compare Messi to Bolt or MJ as they’ve pretty much reached the top level imaginable (just as with era comparisons, you can’t use this argument to say that Messi is undoubtedly better than Maradona (at their best, the former obviously beats the latter on longevity) simply because there are more competition around).
 

Trequarista10

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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
Not really. Population is only one factor, participation is another, then opportunity.

Don't want to get drawn in to the national record example as there are multitudes of other factors. I'll just say I don't think there's another sport that comes close to having even 1/4 of the participation and opportunity that football has,globally.
 

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I don't agree with the notion that it makes those at the top in football are more special. To break a record in an individual sport or win a gold medal in the Olympics is an incredible achievement, takes years of hard work and incredible discipline, and even though football is more popular, the top level of individual sports is extremely competitive.

Football being more competitive doesn't make the journey of an elite footballer harder than other athletes. These things should be looked at individually.
 

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Not really. Population is only one factor, participation is another, then opportunity.

Don't want to get drawn in to the national record example as there are multitudes of other factors. I'll just say I don't think there's another sport that comes close to having even 1/4 of the participation and opportunity that football has,globally.
But we still haven’t seen any stats on this. I’d imagine football has the highest participation as well, but from what I’ve seen on the net, cricket, volleyball and basketball all have participation numbers that are definitely more than a quarter of football’s figure, most of them are almost equal. Some have suggested that volleyball actually has more than football. Do you have any definitive statistics on this?
 

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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.
No. The nationality comparison doesn't work. There are multitudes of other factors involved. Britain has produced multitudes of talented players as well.

I would agree its not possible to say the absolute best footballer (Messi) is better than the absolute best cricketer (Smith? Williamson?) or tennis player (Federer?) Just that the player pool broadly will undoubtedly be better.