​Getting beaten badly this week by the Belgian national team in the Round of 16 at the World Cup has left social media personalities and pundits in an uproar as an inquest into the long history of struggles by the United States men’s soccer team at the world’s biggest sporting event begins. The issue isn’t about athleticism or fitness, and it certainly isn’t about player size. Instead, cultural factors may play a significant role in shaping the team’s lack of success.
At the World Cup, each nation fields a squad of all-stars—its best players who share a common nationality and who play professionally for clubs around the world. Remarkably, for these elite athletes, the off-season often lasts only a couple of weeks, since club football training resumes soon and the season stretches through May. These soccer stars are sometimes regarded as among the fittest athletes, but fitness depends on how we define it. If fitness is measured by endurance, such as how long a person can run, soccer players typically come out ahead. They cover six to 9.5 miles per game through running, jogging, or walking, which demands a robust cardiovascular and aerobic system. If, however, fitness is defined as the amount of force a body can generate in a single second, National Football League players may appear more explosive.
In broad terms, comparing soccer to American football reveals a fundamental difference: endurance and the length of the season versus the short, explosive bursts required in a game. Because the core physical demands of the two sports are so different, comparing them directly is like comparing apples to oranges. Competing at the highest level in any sport requires a blend of athletic attributes—speed, strength, power, agility, and coordination—and the United States is not lacking in athletic talent. The country has produced plenty of great athletes across a wide range of sports. Americans excel across many arenas, a fact reflected in its Olympic medal haul and its strong presence in three of the four most popular professional sports in the United States: baseball, basketball, and American football. While baseball and basketball have substantial international reach on the field and court and in their fan bases, ice hockey is the only one of the four major sports where Americans are outnumbered by international players. Yet even in the NHL, Americans now constitute nearly 30 percent of the rosters.
Amid this discussion, a distinctly nationalist thread has emerged around athleticism. With the NFL—the country’s favorite spectator sport—set to kick off in under two months, some voices have turned the debate into a contested claim about the supposed superiority of certain positions, like wide receivers, running backs, and others, in terms of raw athleticism, all in the name of better search engine optimization and public interest.