I remember when Bolt was playing football in Australia, he scored a goal where it looked like he was having a casual jog, but he made up about 20 yards on the defenders to get to a cross ahead of them. It's a different level of speed altogether.
One thing that goes against footballers, besides their very real and relatively big lack of speed, is the fact their shoes and the surface they play on don't translate as much energy into speed as the shoes and the track made for speed.
That is a very good argument. And also Footballers do all of that running while controlling a football. For me that is the biggest mitigating factor. More important is the fact that you have to choose a sport at a young age. Therefore quick footballers don't spend their whole life on learning how to stand on that step/stand before the race starts. They don't spend 8 years of learning when to give it their all. Meaning if they push too much at the start then they fall back at the ending of the race. So it's basically too incomparable to call. Because a footballer can do that while gaining momentum, but can he do the 100 meter race or does their stride fail them there ? And would they be able to cope with reaching high speeds for a lot of their professional careers ? or they just reach a high point for 3-4 years , meaning he wouldn't be deserving of more than a silver medal once in his professional career. This whole discussion is just for argument's sake.
@@alejandromate4071 We're assuming that professional footballers even have the ability to become elite sprinters if they were to choose track & field and not football. Nothing says they do have the ability, and using their speed on the pitch while pushing a ball isn't a good indicator saying they would.
@@alejandromate4071no a footballer is fastest when they are not controlling the ball. For example when they are chasing after the ball. You arr much slower when you have to maintain a close control of the ball due to the fact that you need to shorten your steps a lot to have close control but you actually need long natural strides to run at your fastest.
Watching Bale overtake world class athletes as if they're 15 year olds on a playground does make the comparison seem less ridiculous, but the idea that footballers (who never train for 100 meter sprints) can outrun individuals who ONLY train for 100 meters is absurd.
Now that I'm actually thinking about how footballers have to do repeat sprints, in zig zag motions, and need to rinse and repeat these for over 90 minutes straight vs sprinters running in a straight line, for less than 11 seconds, and on a track built for speed instead of grass that wants to swallow you whole, I have a renewed respect for footballers.
They’re absolutely incredible the amount of athleticism required, but if we’re being fair, they’re not always moving for that 90mins. Unless you’re an anomaly (like Kante) then they’re moving within a smaller area that they occupy. It’s rare for players to even be moving the full length of the pitch on their half. It’s a team sport so some load is taken off some people when a play is happening; some can relax for a while while the others push then it’s flipped and goes vice versa. Midfielders and maybe wingers see the most activity and their stamina is insane.
@@karma916 Unless of course, you're Messi or Neymar. But more specifically Messi. At one point he had something like 95 pace but he would not be able to maintain that for too long. It would also probably translate to about 85 pace for the Elite athletes.... shoot why am I even writing this?
I was wondering as i watched this, who would be in better shape? Just general athleticism and stamina... surely footballers right? I played tennis pretty competitively a few years ago in my early 20s, when playing for fun on a weekend we would play for about 3 hours a day. Most of my friends played football and at the height of my tennis shape i played with them a few times... i was stunned at how tiring football was. I fancied myself to be in good shape but then i realized there are levels to things lol.
@@karma916 not really, in football you can just rest for a few seconds if you are a defender or a main striker because your team could lose the ball pretty quickly and the opposition could do counter attacks, football is a very active sport for every role, though you are right about the wingers and midfielders part, they do have the most acitivity so their stamina should be top tier.
@@corvus2512 yeah, ive grown up playing football cause in europe its the most famous sport. And its a very tiring sport if you aint got good stamina, hence why footballers have alot of checks on the doctors and if you have heart issues say bye bye to your career.
@@user-sm9zs7sc8u marcell jacobs, the olympic gold medalist, said he used to play football, his coach noticed how fast he was and suggested to change sport… the rest is history 😂
@@user-sm9zs7sc8u yeah but football isnt just sprinting, sprinting is needed only on quick surprise counter attacks especially on the later stages of the game. Footballers need to have insane stamina and agility throughout the game not just a quick sprint and be done. Usain Bolt tried football and he failed.
@@gigasigma8373 Because they're different sports with different skill sets. Stamina is easier to build as well as agility. But world class, elite speed? Not so much. Either you have it or you don't. You can train 9 out of 10 people to build enough stamina and agility over two years to survive two 45+ minute halves. Now, take those same 10 people, train them in springing, and only probably one - if none at all, would sniff a collegiate/NCAA scholarship for sprinting. If fact, it's not so much about stamina and agility in football. It's about technical skills, vision and positional awareness, all of which takes years and years to develop. For vision and positional awareness more so than technical skills, like pure speed, it's either you have or you don't. There are far more professional footballers in the world than elite sprinters, with the former group representing a tiny amount of professional athletes.
@@TickleMeElmo55 hurr durr because football is the most famous sport in the world where billions play unlike sprinting which is just a very small population that actually loves it.
I will never understand how this isn’t universally understood - the skill demands of the sports are vastly different. Sprinters need out & out speed & footballers need agility!
Football players will basically never become the "best" at anything physical. Ignoring the fact they need to be technical with the ball and that that takes time away they're just people who need everything in more or less equal doses. Speed, distance, strength, agility, etc. You're not getting any of those all the way up to the elite level without sacrificing something else.
Reuben, You will always have some random goofy Soccer fanboy who believes soccer players are faster than sprinters. See like Jesus Villarreal. It's unreal!
Classic Tifo video! Takes a question that shouldn't even need to be asked and delivers an in depth answer providing more information than you'd think would even exist. 11/10
It actually shows how efficiently he’s dissipating his power! Looking powerful has nothing to do with actual power, on the contrary fluid and clean motion can be really powerful, it’s even more evident in combat sports, big loopy punches and kicks look great until they land to no critical damage, whereas clean punches look like touches of death.
@@bluesyace9564 Every media outlet, every person on earth, has their own biasness. The question is, how do you overcome it in order for what you are conveying to be more factual and presentable for all parties? Tifo does a good job at being factual as much as possible.
I guess the retort to that is Jahvid Best retired from the NFL and managed to make it to the semi finals in the 2016 Rio Olympics. And he's not the fastest player in the NFL, I think an extremely fast footballer can make it to the final at least if they retired from football in their early 20s and focus solely on sprinting.
@@fizzyboy08 Carlin Isles also made a succesful transition from sprinting to Rugby 7. But if you're a winger on a 7's pitch there are times where you will be able to just run straight
@@fizzyboy08 Firstly, Jahvid Best didn’t make the semis and he ran for St Lucia, not the U.S., so it’s not like he had to make the team vs other Olympic level athletes. Look at when DK Metcalf ran at trials. It wasn’t even close. Best ran a 10.39 in his heat and didn’t make the semis
@@fizzyboy08 I guess the comeback is that Best ran for St Lucia and did a 10.39. Not trying to belittle either but there are hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of sprinters who run quicker than that each year. To genuinely even have a shot at an Olympic semi final you need to be in at least 10.1 shape.
Partially torn my acl because i did not warm up properly. Now my knee are so weak, sometimes my knee felt wobbly even when im walking normally, and i can felt pain in my knee when the weather were cold
I'd love to see a video like this about American football, as a former track athlete it was great seeing American football Twitter overrate DK Metcalf's sprinting only for him to finish last when he ended up doing a track race. Amazing wide receiver but just like association football it's just a different skill set.
Remember Ronaldo sprinting competition it was with castro oil, lots of different tests done including him meeting a corner blind. Was great to show how good an athlete he is
There is no chance that a footballer would ever be comparable to an olympic sprinter for one simple reason: Olympic spinters have to run for 10 seconds and footballers for 90 minutes. This means that olympic sprinters have more fast twitch muscles compared to footballers. Also footballers are usually exhausted from having already run for a while. You would be hard pressed to find a footballer who can run even within 5 km/h of Bolt's speed
An analogy I came up with while watching this: Sprinters are like drag racing cars. Footballers are like Formula 1 cars. Both exceptional at what they do, in their own unique ways.
It reminds when MMA fighters do boxing yes they have that skillset in their arsenal and have to do it well to a certain level, but they have so many other skillsets and attributes they can focus on and also rely on whereas boxers focus on one aspect of fighting
@@Eidenhoek Because you are showing exactly what you will do to your adversary, which you shouldn't in a boxing match, and if you try to imitate Roman Reigns punching the ground and screaming your adversary will be over you fast, he will not patiently wait to receive a punch, unless this is done after you knock him down so you have some time for such shananigans
@@sergiowinter5383 That's...not a superman punch. You don't *jump* in an actual...well, you *kinda* jump, but I'm not talking about Roman Reigns at *all*.
Interesting video and right conclusions. It would be interesting if one footballer, like Bale, retiring from football, and beginning to do sprinters training - with golf in free time -
One thing I remember was in a Soccer aid match (a charity match) and Bolt had a one on one race to the ball against the long distance runner, Sir Mo Farah. This was a while into the match so fatigue might have been setting in but the result was Farah appeared to be much fast than Bolt, and even faster than the professionals that had just retired. I found that interesting to see.
As a footballer you’re limited by having to play 90 mins. So they have to gain slow twitch fibre muscles. Sprinter train everyday to maximise their distance.
Also limited by circumstance. No footballers ever reach their top speed each game as it is not their intention. I have no doubt if players deliberately set out to run as fast as they could there would be a few who would approach or even break 40kph.
@@Sam-tz3oz highly doubt that. The same way I doubt if every high level sprinter tried to perform the same feats of agility as high level football players the best still wouldn't approach or do better. It isn't the intention of their sport that's the point. So why would even few have that speed if they weren't sprinters before. Same for sprinters with football agility
@@jestersage8700 Given that there are already players who have been recorded at 37-38kph. On a track with spikes and without any tiredness it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable for them to hit 40kph.
I've been waiting for this video for a long time. Tifo have it spot on when they say that it is ridiculous to compare athletes who train their whole lives to sprint to those who train to be versatile footballers. I'm a distance runner myself and having played quite a lot of football, see the game like a 10km race. It's about endurance and having the ability to last the full thing rather than being able to put in a couple of good sprints. Even on the football pitch, you only have so many sprints in you per game so you have to choose wisely when you do fully exert yourself. The rest of it is "recovery" which is still running steadily and working hard throughout the game. Both types are great athletes but as Joe rightly points out, impossible to compare. You don't win a football game by running 100m in 9.80 seconds, but you do get an Olympic Gold. 🤷♂️
@@kurtsudheim825 No no... I'm looking for more running techniques in general... You can still do hurdles with a sidestep, they just have to be small like 15cm ones. While you mention it, let's add hurdles to swimming, not to every event, just some events need a counterpart with them to spice it up.
"Some of them would struggle to break eleven seconds." Yes, this is definitely true, but not because they aren't that fast: it's because they aren't trained in how to run 100m. Top HS athletes in the US can easily break 11s in the 100 because they are trained in the techniques necessary to pace out the run, start well, explode from the blocks, etc. But no, those 16 & 17 year olds are not all faster than Mbappe and Davies. I'm very confident that if those two spent a year training with the top track coaches in the world, they would be close to the 10s mark.
@@sydboski By the metric of 100m dash times, sure. But probably not by something like kmph or mph at top speed, and certainly not by the metric of running while dribbling a ball.
yeah I was going to say, he might not be a *professional* footballer but he's a footballer. I also think I remember him trying out for some Australian team but not making the cut.
Could you do footballers running marathons? Obviously they'll all be retired, but I know Alvaro Arbeloa has a time around 3:14 for Valencia in 2019 and a half marathon time of 1:17 in Rock n Roll Madrid 2019 coming 38th overall.
Adam Gemili is the only footballer to run track and his PB for 100 meters is 9.97 seconds. So if other football players who are known for their speed chose track over football they would be excellent sprinters.
Define "excellent sprinters." Elite/Olympics? NCAA level? Just because footballers who are known for their speed doesn't mean that speed will translate onto the track. Adam is N = 1. An anecdote. Stats wise, one example out of hundreds doesn't even register.
@@TickleMeElmo55 Bruh you might not know but footballers like Adama Traore, Gareth Bale, Kyle Walker, Alphonso Davies, etc have the ability to be a sprinter. Adam Gemili is the perfect example. In his childhood he played football at Chelsea youth academy and also played few professional games but he still transformed himself into a sport which needs a completely different type of speed.
@@thenorseprodigy7466 Gemilli had to quit soccer to become a world class sprinter. The biggest word in your first comment is "if". You do not know what would happen IF they did what Gemilli did. They are not as fast as Gemilli was when he was playing soccer. Gemilli was running track and sprint training while playing soccer. These guys are not. You cannot expect the same result when the beginnings are not the same.
@@sydboski I'm not saying that every fast footballers can become sprinters but Bale, Traore, Walker and few others have the ability to become world-class sprinter.
@@thenorseprodigy7466 Well Bale would have to break the Welsh national record of 10.11 to even reach the qualifying standard of 10.05. For Traore he would have to be the fastest fastest Spaniard ever breaking their national record of 10.06 to qualify at 10.05. The MPH/KPH stats are not official and will never be official. They are meant to be entertainment. To attract the stat people. They are not 100% accurate, because there are too many variables. Wind, field conditions, temperature, time of game the run takes place (a run at the beginning of the game will definitely be faster than a run at the end), how long the run is, etc.... What I am getting at is the MPH/Kph stat does not prove who can run the fastest.
As a track athlete, I know 15-17 years olds, who are regular sub 11s runners, who would beat the likes of Bale, mbappe, Walcott etc. I used to play Football before athletics, and over 30-40m I’d smoke everyone I’d come against, then my first week I joined a track team, I was 17 getting smoked by 13/14 year olds in training. Being fast in football and being fast in track are 2 different levels.
People who have never sprinted competitively have no clue how chaotic the difference is between running 12.5 and 11 seconds. The idea that Bale is faster than Bolt is so outrageous that there are no words to describe it. Even if those fastest footballers ran 11 seconds (they don't) they would be so far behind Bolt it would be painful.
As a sprinter I can say, sprinting is lot more than just sprinting. It takes years of practice to have a good technique inorder to reach the human speed limit.
and it takes years and years of practice to reach the human agility limit as a footballer. Sprinters just run 100 meters as fast as they can in a straight line, footballers have to do so much more than that + with a ball on their feet on grass with spikey boots.
The crazy thing to think about is that Bolt is quite literally the fastest human being to ever exist. And that is so cool and something I really enjoyed when watching him race.
You guys are probably going to start world cup related videos soon, I hope!!! One video idea: what is it about Croatian managers that make them succeed in Iranian football? Is it something to do with Croatian football and its similarities to Iranian football from a tactical standpoint?
The boys at my high school were achieving ~12 seconds when I was 14, harsh to assume the fastest grown footballers wouldn't break 11 seconds wearing athlete spiked trainers on synthetic ground
It's not harsh. It's just common sense. Until the fasters grown footballers prove themselves on the track all this huffing and puffing of their potential to be elite is just pure hypotheticals.
Seeing this video, I have an idea for Tifo. Let's talk about speed - in general, what does it mean when a player can play a 'fast-paced game'? Is it the speed of turnovers? Is it the speed of a long ball pinged over to just 2 players in a counter attack? What about the less tangible 'speed of thought' that players like Xavi, Iniesta and Scholes had? Sure speed isn't all about an Owen or Gerrard simply bustling up and down? How about the speed of a team rotating into spaces a la Barcelona 2009-2011? They don't run like dogs but they are always there for one or two touch plays.
Such a detailed and well researched video! Despite athletes being faster than footballers - would be fun to see an all star footballers vs athletes 100m! 🔥🔥
The fact footballers are faster when it comes to zigzags makes sense. I mean, it's like in music. Someone might be a genius on classical guitar, but if you give them an acoustic, they can't strum.
@@Pri405 A few years ago Antonio Valencia was clocked as faster than bale. Other footballers like Aaron Lennon and Ronaldo also came close to bales speed when they were young. Bale is rapid, thats for sure, but doesnt mean he is Usain bolt ffs.
I always find these discussions incredibly frustrating to listen to, because they are so stupid. Most of the folks in this thread get it, but you can tell some still don't. I think that fans admire their players so much that they just have to be convinced that they are better than other athletes, even at the thing the other athlete does that isn't what their players do. And I get that because soccer players are running out on the field it seems like they are doing what track athletes are doing, but they really aren't. It is almost like saying that because soccer players have to have a really good spatial sense to play the ball in the air, that they would make better architects than world class architects. You know . . . because their sense of space is so good. But that's not how it works.
Owen ran a 10.8 second 100m when he was 14, Theo Walcott ran a 10.6 100m, David Odonkor also recorded a 10.6 100m, Claudio Caniggia could run a 10.5 100m with many saying his pb was 10.2 and Adam gameli a Chelsea youth ran a 10.23 100m as a under 20s athlete, chose track and field
Same. I did sprints in high school as well played soccer. I follow the professional sprinting world and the up-and-comers in high school sprinting. People who say elite forwards and midfielders are secretly elite sprinters make me wonder if it's their fanboyism talking or that they're just plain stupid.
Also factor in that when they are recording football speed they're running on grass, wearing cleats and also depending on the situation may or not be dribbling a ball
I get athletes are faster than footballer, but that stat that the female athelelte would beat the best footballer for pace was bullshxt😂 Genetics still exist across different sports
Bruh those women spent their whole lives running at tops speeds any men ballers would get smoked no doubt. Ur just being sexist and I'm an man. Women aren't as good as man at sports coz of genetics but they aren't as bad as u think
But that's the data. The speeds they are clocked at are slower than elite female sprinters. Walker's top speed was 32kmh, with even the average speed at the Olympic 100m being 33kmh. The top speed would be faster.
Such an interesting topic to cover but a lot is decided from a young age. The body models itself in response to the stresses placed on it, on a framework provided by genetics. A more complex issue to consider is the decision making that individuals make during this process, usually from a young age. The barrier to defining sprinting as a talent is very low - we all get that opportunity from a young age and selection takes care of the rest (there are some arguments to be made for loss due to late development of talent in some individuals following the completion of puberty and full physiological development). Sports and other athletic pursuits have different barriers/thresholds for talent to become recognised and very few may even have the opportunity. Individuals themselves may select to pursue different sports for different reasons. Financial and other rewards may steer some towards professional sports over athletics where the potential upsides are not as great. This can mask where the true talents really are but, for the most part, in disciplines like sprinting, there fastest in the world really are that.
Sprinting is a different skill set to football. Sprinters will have a greater power output in a straight line and around a bend. However, footballer are more agile and flexible whilst running due to to the constant changes in direction. Also sprinters only run 100-200 meters in 10-20 seconds, while footballers run up to 10km over 90 minutes. The muscle fibres and cardiovascular endurance needed is completely different for both sets of athletes due to these differing physical requirements for their respective sports.
Look in American football and the story of wide receiver (like a winger) Ted Ginn Jr. He was a track athlete with elite speed, but his body movement didn't fit the field as well as a more elusive type of runner. Which would be naturally slower, due to the footwork. Also, his hands weren't the best. But it shows how to two sports can match up, and then delink just as fast. Both American football and Futbal are more technical driven, rather than pure running. So the athletes don't specialize in pure running.
