Would the U.S. actually win the World Cup if its best athletes played soccer?playIs Spain’s World Cup win better than their 2010 victory? (1:21)Bill BarnwellJul 27, 2026, 07:00 AM ETClose
Bill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X’s and O’s, offseason transactions and so much more.
He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.
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It’s the same viral tweet every time the United States gets knocked out of the Men’s World Cup. “If America’s best athletes all played soccer,” the story goes, “the U.S. would dominate.”
In the abstract, of course, the idea seems incredible. Lamar Jackson whipping in crosses for LeBron James? Josh Allen marauding through midfield? Aaron Judge tipping away penalties? Sure, that would be fun.
Would it really propel the United States to an unmatched level of dominance in world football? I’m not so sure, and the reason starts with the greatest player of his (or perhaps any) generation.
The answer to why the United States couldn’t just ride a wave of super-athletes to a World Cup is listed at 5-foot-7 and 148 pounds.
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Lionel Messi is an incredible athlete, but he’s a very different athlete than the vast majority of Americans who might populate in your head when you think about that potential American national team, with every great wing and wide receiver in the player pool.
In basketball or football, Messi’s height and small frame would almost be disqualifying. In soccer, it has obviously proven to be a blessing, with a low center of gravity, short-area quickness and the ability to deke defenders before beating them into position to shoot, all easier to do thanks to his smaller frame. It’s impossible to say whether Messi’s vision, creative ability and inch-perfect accuracy as a distributor evolved out of a need to beat bigger, stronger players from his beginnings at La Masia, but it certainly seems as if it’s part of the discussion.
Messi is typically one of the smallest players on the pitch, but in terms of legendary players, he’s not a dramatic outlier. Diego Maradona, another Argentine legend, was 5-foot-5 and 160 pounds. Ronaldinho, the star of the Barcelona team before Messi’s promotion to the seniors, was 5-foot-10 and 172 pounds. Even Kylian Mbappé, who spent the summer dueling with Messi for the World Cup scoring record books, is listed at 5-foot-10 and 163 pounds.
Though there’s no doubting that the USMNT would be better with more elite athletes in the player pool, the idea that they would dominate and become the best team on the planet is limited by that reality. Size and speed are great, but there are positions where they’re a plus and others where they don’t have much impact. And those positions would still be lacking even amid a superpool.
To put that in context, let’s consider the best players.
Each year, ESPN FC puts together a top 100 across a range of positions on the pitch. The most recent list had 10 goalkeepers, 10 fullbacks, 10 central defenders, 15 central/defensive midfielders, 15 attacking midfielders, 20 wingers and 20 central forwards, so I found the average height and weight for players in each group. Though this isn’t a large sample, I don’t believe that these groupings represent massive outliers relative to the broader player pools at each position.
POSITIONAL GROUPHEIGHT (in)WEIGHT (lbs)Goalkeepers75.1191.0Center Backs74.6186.3Fullbacks70.5164.1Defensive Midfielders71.2162.1Attacking Midfielders71.4158.5Wingers70.3158.2Center Forwards73.0178.2There’s a pretty significant divide. On one side, there are goalkeepers, center backs and center forwards. The average player among those groups is 6-foot-2 and weighs more than 183 pounds. On the other, there are fullbacks, midfielders of all kinds and wingers. On average, they’re 5-foot-11 and just over 160 pounds.If you’ve watched soccer, this is already second nature. Goalkeepers need to be tall enough to cover as much of the net as possible. Center backs and strikers are asked to do more in the air than players at other positions; both to try and score with headers on one end and prevent those goals from occurring on the other. Most tall prospects get shepherded to one of those two positions during the developmental process.What if LeBron James, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson played on the USMNT? Getty ImagesEven at those positions, though, there’s a point where being tall simply limits your ability to control the ball and protect it from other players. Last year, there were only four outfield players across the big five European leagues (the top divisions in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) who played more than 600 minutes who were 6-foot-6 or taller. Go back to 2019-20 and that number was two. In 2014-15, just five players qualified.
It’s difficult to imagine many countries having as many tall super-athletes as the United States, but these leagues seek talent across the entire planet. In a sporting landscape that’s very good at getting truly elite players from around the globe into one of those five leagues, you can typically count the number of 6-foot-6 or taller players who can play at the highest level on one hand. And again, those players are almost exclusively strikers or center backs. As amazingly athletic as players such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant are, it’s difficult to believe that they would translate their incredible talents on the court to the pitch. That alone takes out a significant portion of the player pool.
Though goal scorers and defenders tend to be taller, creators are almost always smaller. Let’s take those big five leagues and the three seasons we referenced earlier: 2025-26, 2019-20, and 2014-15. In those three seasons, there were 33 instances of a player racking up at least 10 assists.
The average height of those players was 5-foot-10. Just one of those 33 players was as tall as 6-foot-2: Cristiano Ronaldo, who is listed at exactly that height on ESPN. If we do the same analysis with chances and set the threshold at 50 to create a larger sample, just 15 of the 267 players who generated 50 or more chances in those seasons were 6-foot-2 or taller. There were nearly twice as many players (27) who were 5-foot-7 or shorter generating 50 or more chances in those seasons.
Players who were 6-foot-2 or taller made up about 22% of the minutes in the 15 seasons we’re referring to here, but they were responsible for about only 12% of the assists, chances created and successful take-ons (dribbles). This doesn’t mean that taller players can’t be creative or succeed — as players such as Harry Kane (6-foot-4) and Paul Pogba (6-foot-3) have shown at their best — but we don’t typically see teams build through tall players in creative roles as central midfielders or wingers.
There’s also the reality of footballers almost invariably weighing less than their American counterparts. This shouldn’t be a surprise when you consider the nature of soccer and its steady state of running versus sports such as baseball and football, where there are brief periods of play in pitches and snaps between breaks. Athletes in both sports have naturally evolved to fit what works best.
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Nicol: Pochettino changed the identity of the USMNT
Vikings star wide receiver Justin Jefferson, who isn’t particularly tall or big by NFL standards, is listed at 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds. Though Jefferson’s incredible explosiveness off the line of scrimmage would make him a logical fit as a winger on an all-athlete USMNT, there’s not a fullback, midfielder, or winger listed at 190 pounds or more in the top 100 beyond Scott McTominay, who is 6-foot-4 and 192 pounds.
If Jefferson were optimizing to play soccer, he would probably end up closer to 165 or 170 pounds. I have no doubt that Jefferson would still be a great athlete, but would he be quite as explosive or dynamic without the same muscle structure at a lower weight? For someone such as Ja’marr Chase, who is listed at 205 pounds, adapting to soccer might be even more difficult.
At the same time, switching sports might open opportunities for players who aren’t up to typical NFL or NBA heights. There might be a universe where slot receiver Greg Dortch, who is listed at 5-foot-7 and 180 pounds, is a world-class winger if he spent his life playing soccer. Basketball Hall of Famer Allen Iverson, who was 6 feet and 165 pounds, might have been an incredible defensive midfielder. That sort of scenario seems more likely than the best players at other sports emerging as world-class soccer players at the same size.
We just saw an example of how difficult it can be for great football players to compete in even a slightly different version of a far more familiar sport.
In March, the United States men’s flag football team faced a pair of teams stocked with current or former NFL players, including stars such as Saquon Barkley, Jalen Hurts, and Devonta Smith, as well as legends such as Patrick Peterson, Luke Kuechly and Tom Brady. The flag football players, none of whom have ever played a snap in the NFL, won all three games by a combined score of 106-44.
Guess what they have in common? They’re not very tall. Ten of the 12 players were 5-foot-11 or shorter, including captain Darrell Doucette, who is 5-foot-7. Just one player was over 6 feet. In flag football, where agility is essential to keep players from grabbing your flag, smaller might be better.
I’m sure that NFL players might do better if they devoted their next year or two towards mastering flag football, or had spent their entire lives focusing exclusively on the flag version of the game, but you get the idea. Height and size aren’t always virtues when the game changes. And though flag football shares some vague similarities with tackle football, soccer is an entirely different sport, where an even lower center of gravity might be ideal.
The biggest team in this year’s World Cup, weighted for minutes played, exceeded expectations. The average minutes from Norway was from a player who is 6-foot-1 tall, and the average minutes were from a player weighing 182 pounds. Both of those were the largest in terms of height/weight for any team’s average minutes from a player on the pitch. The other biggest teams were mostly disappointments as Bosnia, the Netherlands, and Germany all crashed out relatively quickly. The heaviest teams after Norway were Panama, the Ivory Coast and Switzerland.
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3:07
What would England’s team look like if Pep Guardiola was manager?
Guess who had the shortest team in the World Cup? Argentina. Spain were slightly below average in size, ranking 30th in height and 26th in weight. France was the 17th-tallest team, but the fifth heaviest on average. England were 11th in height (thanks to Kane) and 25th in weight. The United States was just about average, ranking 22nd in height and 20th in weight.
Norway’s star player, of course, is sculpted as if he could step onto an NBA court or NFL field. Erling Haaland is listed at 6-foot-5 and 205 pounds, and, as we saw against Brazil, Haaland might singlehandedly win a match with a couple of touches. Haaland’s ability in the air and his explosiveness in the box even feel like qualities we would associate with the best athletes in American sports.
Though I don’t think America could just sub in a team of super-athletes from other sports and start stacking up World Cups, there’s no question that a universe where American men focus on other sports for their entire lives would produce more stars. It’s way more likely that the U.S. would produce someone such as Haaland or Cristiano Ronaldo, strikers who have applied devastating athleticism to score goals in bunches.
That version of the men’s national team would have better options at striker, center back and goalie. Of course, goalkeeping has generally been the strength of the national team over the past 30 years, with players such as Kasey Keller, Brad Friedel and Tim Howard enjoying lengthy careers as starters in the English Premier League. The U.S. hasn’t consistently produced central defenders or forwards, and it seems telling that the best striker the country has ever had might be Folarin Balogun, who spent virtually his entire life in England after being born in America.
Even if we believe that the United States could produce elite goalkeeping, center backs and strikers in this scenario, we’d still likely be lacking creative players on the wing and through the middle of the field. The most notable midfielders or wingers the United States has produced, in terms of stature at the European club level, are Claudio Reyna, Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley and Weston McKennie.
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3:07
What would England’s team look like if Pep Guardiola was manager?
Though McKennie has been a steady contributor for a team in the Champions League, and Dempsey was capable of producing truly spectacular goals, no American has been the primary chance creator on a prominent, successful European club team for a significant stretch of time. Countries such as Argentina, England, France and Spain might have multiple players on their squad at any one time who fit that criteria.
Developing Americans with the skills to play those roles is the multimillion-dollar question vexing the United States Soccer Federation. My colleague Dan Wetzel wrote about the failure of pay-to-play soccer and travel sports. Arsene Wenger, the legendary Arsenal manager and current FIFA head of global development, echoed those concerns. Playing futsal or street soccer or some form of the game that relies heavily on creating in tight spaces from a young age might do it. That answer is far more difficult and an entirely different column.
I don’t, however, think it’s as simple as dropping elite athletes from other sports into the United States’ lineup, and even if that were the case, what’s to say that other countries wouldn’t benefit from the same move? If turning the soccer dial up to 10, and all the other sports down to zero, would make LeBron James a star striker, imagine what France would look like with Victor Wembanyama as a 7-foot-4 target man. Is Shohei Ohtani suddenly the best striker on the planet? Does Australia round up their Aussie Rules footballers, rugby and cricket players and become a global powerhouse?
Countries that are already much better than the U.S. at soccer, such as England and Germany, get to add talent from other sports, too. America isn’t the only place producing elite athletes.
