My nephew plays te for a top 20 school. It’s very different than the soccer process. He used to be in a very high skilled sport and walked onto football in high school purely based on body type. He just got a big 10 offer despite having very little footage and having played very few minutes for his top 20 school sitting behind seniors (though he did shift to varsity as a sophomore and skipped the frosh team altogether). He does 7v 7 but no one takes the practice schedule as seriously as soccer (it’s a once a weekend thing). Very little by way of skills training. The training mostly comes in diet and straight up exercise for which he puts my soccer player to shame.
Soccer training is very iq and skill based. It requires a different kind of dedication. Yes soccer is also athletic and could benefit from the entrance of those top 20 school football athletes. But again it’s not 1 to 1. You have to knock out the lower level schools. You have to knock out those that aren’t willing to grind the skills (partially why they are attracted to football…with the exception of the qbs which start very young it’s something you can jump into and without a large investment if the body is right). You have to knock out the positions like lineman that don’t translate into a running sport. And you have to knock out the lower play iq players (which becomes a critical factor in the move from collegiate football to pro). While it would potentially widen the pool of finding a generational talent like Messi necessary to win the World Cup, it doesn’t explain why we aren’t able to put together a supporting squad in contention for the quarter finals of the cup every year. We have enough athletes for that just based on the Latino community alone.
