Well, nfl/nba are focused on big guys, 6’3 and above. In soccer your height/mass doesn’t matter much so the talent pools don’t overlap. And baseball is the old man’s game that does not require any athleticism at all.

Lotta roles for fast smaller guys in NFL and MLB, so there's certainly competition.

Beaten-to-death takes about baseball and athleticism aside, if a kid shows potential there it's a great path to follow:

- some of the highest individual salaries and (to date) least restrictions on team spending

- it's very very very easy for individual talent to stand out at basically every position; this can be harder in football and various levels especially for non-QB positions

But once you're on the baseball path you're not gonna be training a skillset that would have much overlap with a soccer skillset.

As you indicate the most popular (and generally highest paying) professional sports in the US are football, basketball and baseball.

This includes college football and basketball, which are part of the career path for those sports.

Women's soccer is relatively popular, however.

> Women's soccer is relatively popular, however.

This may be a function of the fact that no other women's team sport is at all popular in the US?

Womens basketball viewership across college, pro and semi pro levels is significantly more popular than equivalent womens soccer levels. Non-USWNT games are surprisingly hard to locate and stream.

The WNBA would like a word.

> In soccer your height/mass doesn’t matter much so the talent pools don’t overlap.

This is untrue and also just silly. The talent pools for horse jockeys and NBA players don't overlap. The talent pool for soccer and football is probably 90% overlap. Smaller players are certainly more likely to be successful in soccer than football but tall players can do great in soccer and average height guys can do well in football.

> And baseball is the old man’s game that does not require any athleticism at all.

Come on. Baseball doesn't demand the same athleticism as soccer but these guys are still elite athletes and there are plenty of stories of both MLB and NFL offering positions to the same players.

Taller players do great in soccer, to a point. I mean, goalkeepers are the tallest, typically, about 6'4, 6'5. For field players, they usually max out around 6'3, but that's only for certain specialized positions like a striker, or central defender. Above that and you are too big and too slow, smaller players will quite literally run circles around you. I think overall average height of soccer player is below 6 feet.

Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player of all time is only 5'7 - that should tell you something.

> Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player of all time is only 5'7 - that should tell you something.

One data point doesn’t tell me anything. Cristiano Ronaldo, also frequently in the “GOAT” conversation is 6’2”.

On Argentina’s national team, literally no one is shorter than Messi. 17 of the players (20 with keepers) are taller than the Argentinian average male height with only 6 below.

> they usually max out around 6'3, but that's only for certain specialized positions like a striker, or central defender

Specialized positions like “all of them”. There are literally no positions in soccer where it is advantageous to be short. There are simply positions where it is less of a disadvantage.

> Above that and you are too big and too slow, smaller players will quite literally run circles around you.

I’m the same height as Messi so I would love to believe that there is some athletic advantage to being short, but it’s just not true. Messi is outstanding in spite of his height, not because of it.

Short people are not faster than tall people, not even very tall people. Maybe in the extreme outliers this is true, but Usain Bolt is 6’5”.

The average NFL CB is the same size as a striker, but quicker and faster. And it isn't even all that close. Its the living and breathing soccer that matters. In those places, the best athletes play soccer. In the US, they play football or basketball. And if you think you can do anything at a pro level without extreme levels of athleticism, you are greatly deluded.

The amount of distance covered in a soccer game is twice that of a cornerback in an NFL game. Unlike NFL, soccer also has very limited substitutions so you can't readily swap in fresh legs. An athlete needs to be able to go the full distance at a high level.

A natural cornerback isn't going to be "quicker and faster" over that many miles without a different kind of conditioning that probably favors different genetics. That said, I do think the game would translate well for some cornerbacks in some roles.

Additionally, a top-division European soccer team also typically plays something like 34 or 38 league games every season, and that doesn’t include things like domestic cups and European competition.

Excellent point. I hadn’t even considered the number of games. Good players will play over 2500 minutes in a season. That is a completely different type of wear and tear.

Why not both?

And sprinkle in some cultural differences (soccer is not that popular in the USA, so it's self-reinforcing).

IIRC, Steve Nash wanted to play professional soccer but since there wasn't a professional pathway had to settle for playing basketball in college and later the NBA.

I think you're probably underestimating just how much time kids in other places spend playing football in their spare time. When I was a kid, we were out 2-3 hours every night after school playing it.