Sports
Related: About this forumQuestion: If Usain Bolt Played Football (NOT the American style), How Do You Think He'd Do?
I would think that he could be great. Who could catch him on the field?
FBaggins
(26,731 posts)(This assuming that he doesn't have years of experience playing the sport).
Who could catch him on the field?
That would be true if sprint speed were the only consideration (it isn't even the top of a long list).
He would run really fast for a short time, but would be unable to receive or retain control of the ball... and then a few minutes later he would realize that it's an endurance sport, not a sprinting sport.
Swede
(33,236 posts)Probably not.
It's like asking whether Michael Phelps would make a good professional water polo player just because both sports take place in the water.
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)He'd have to completely retrain for soccer. His sprinting would not help him for the marathon that is soccer.
mathematic
(1,439 posts)They're natural 400m runners. Great sprint speed and speed endurance but they don't need anything close to the type of endurance of a literal marathon (or 10k, or 5k, or even a 1500m).
It's strange too because you'd figure that "constant" running of soccer players is very similar to what distance runners call a threshold workout but it turns out that they get enough rest between bouts of fast running that they really aren't doing a threshold workout, they're doing a sprint workout.
The upshot is that Bolt's speed and speed endurance translates well to soccer. He'd still need the skills to play the game though.
For a frame of reference, a world class soccer player runs 10-15km in a 90 min match, with 60 minutes of standing/walking, 25 minutes of jogging, with 3km of hard running, which includes over 600m of actual sprinting. Compare to a world class endurance athlete who runs 10k in 27 min, all of it hard (naturally) with the last 400-ish meters as a sprint. There's a video of Galen Rupp doing a 6x1mile (=9.6km total) workout @ 4:30 pace followed by 10x200m sprints. This is a workout he'll complete in under an hour (50 minutes using standard training principles). Rupp's workout is a threshold workout with speedwork at the end. The comparison here is how different it is to the running in a soccer match.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)It has been done before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hayes
Bob Hayes is the only man to win both an Olympic gold medal and a Super Bowl ring.
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)he would be a killer WR on the deep route.
El Supremo
(20,365 posts)Yavin4
(35,438 posts)It's really good. You should try to catch it. I never realized how violent cricket is until I saw it.
Response to Yavin4 (Original post)
JonLP24 This message was self-deleted by its author.