Making a Maradona: Meat Consumption and Soccer Prowess

Re:Making a Maradona: Meat Consumption and Soccer Prowess by borroka on Saturday July 23, 2022 @05:13PM (#32207628)

The relative success of one country vs another is multifactorial, mysterious, and I would have a lot to say about it, or better, to speculate about, but for now I will simply say that Scotland is a small country, therefore with a limited number of candidates for international-level football, and is losing part of their talent pool to the sport of rugby. Most of the backs and some flankers would definitely be good candidates for top-level football.

Croatia has basketball, but the talent pools for basketball and football do not overlap. Then, we are talking here about national teams. At the club level, the performance of teams from Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland is far from that of teams from the most, football-wise, prestigious countries.

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Re:Making a Maradona: Meat Consumption and Soccer Prowess by smcl on Saturday July 23, 2022 @06:10PM (#32208048)

I would strongly disagree that we're losing players to rugby. While rugby is (IMO[0]) the second sport in Scotland far more youngsters play football than rugby, and in practical terms the potential for making a career out of rugby is more unlikely than football. So I don't think that we're spreading ourselves more thinly than Croatia are, I think there's something more to it than that.

[0] - I actually read a while back that Cricket had more registered players than Rugby in Scotland, but I take this with a pinch of salt. But make no doubt about it, our sporting focus is roughly similarly focussed on Football to Croatia's.

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Re:Making a Maradona: Meat Consumption and Soccer Prowess by FredPret on Saturday July 23, 2022 @06:31PM (#32208205)

Pro rugby players and pro soccer players usually look like they're barely from the same species - I'd be amazed if anyone has the opportunity of choosing a first class career in both sports

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