06-22-2016, 11:42 AM
(06-22-2016, 11:02 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Yeah. To be fair, I wonder whether American coaches are too influenced by national archetypes of what makes a good athlete -- a lot of "good athlete" American players don't necessarily have soccer-specific athleticism. (e.g. a player like Zardes is fast, but because he's a long-strider, it takes him too long to get up to speed. Messi, on the other hand, is quicker than fast -- and that's most important in soccer. Coaches, I think, could stand to focus more on change of direction, acceleration, and balance rather than outright top speed or height.)
Isn't this true in other sports as well? The story in baseball is extremely well known, and it seems to be quite true in football (I don't know enough about basketball or hockey to know if there are similar myopias there too). Or are you saying that coaches in the US are particularly bad about this compared to their peers abroad? That seems to open a large arbitrage advantage to me.
Also, didn't Klingsman win a world cup in Germany? Has he gone crazy with old age or something? At some point he was effective, right?