How fast could Messi run the 5k?

Except you were a runner who trained at running. Soccer players run about a 10k during a 90-min game. So while a good distance, it says very little about them running the distance at a sustained effort.

We've been over this a hundred times on here.

Some footballers would make excellent runners (mostly long sprints and mid-distance, but a few would be good at long distance)

All footballers are substantially better than the general population at distance running

Among professional footballers, there is very little correlation between football and running ability. The few who would make talented distance runners are not necessarily the best at football.

Due to selection bias, the published times you see are generally from the fastest footballers (at any given level), so Messi or anyone else whose times you don't know is probably slower.

I've started calling this "superhero syndrome", where people believe that just because someone is the best at one very big thing, they are also the best at everything else, the smartest, the mentally toughest, etc. etc. Superheroes may be superior beings, but for the rest of us it's more complicated than that. Messi is the best at football because he has myriad elite talents that together with decades of specific training and experience make him uniquely suited for football.

“Superhero syndrome” is what happened to Wilt Chamberlain. Overtime he became able to bench press 500lbs, had a 50 inch vertical, could run 45 for 400m and sun 15 5k, among other feats.

let’s not forget, Carl Lewis couldn’t break 2:00 in the Superstars challenge.

Just don't get it. Most of the Argentina team would be better 100, 200, 400, & 800 meter candidates. Why pick their weakest distance?

My school didn't have a football team, so the boy's soccer team was treated the way football teams are treated most places. They were very good; they won the state final a few years before I was a freshman, and narrowly lost it when I was a sophomore. A few of their guys -- not the very best ones, but some starters and second-stringers -- would run track to stay fit in the off-season (soccer is a fall sport where I come from). Every year, our best 400 and 800 meter guys were soccer players, and they made up 50% of any 4x400 or 4x800 squad we ran*. A few midfielders could hang in the mile, but they were mediocre at anything longer. The exceptions arrived my senior year, when two then-sophomores who were JV benchwarmers in soccer joined, and instantly became our best distance guys. After that season, they switched from soccer to cross country. By the end of their senior year, they were consistent 15-minute 5k guys; the better of the two medalled at states in both cross country and the 3200. They are currently both running at a hugh level collegiately. All of this to say, distance running prowess is not correlated to soccer playing. If anything, the demands of soccer would seem to prepare athletes better for the 400 and 800, where they were reliably sub-50 and sub-2:00.

*One of the guys was an all-state goalkeeper who ran sub-50 on a 4x400 relay leg and was a two-time state medallist in the pole vault. He went on to be a multi-eventer at the D1 level, but without much success.

Isn't the real question "how good of a soccer player would Katelyn Tuohy be?"

She actually started playing soccer and as with many prepubescents girls, it's an easy transition to distance running as they often are able to run incredibly fast times with just the soccer conditioning. For whatever reason it doesn't seem to have as strong of an impact on boys, but elementary and middle school soccer is a breeding ground for female distance runners.

My high school soccer coach made the team come out for summer conditioning, the whole varsity squad was between 16:00-18:00 by the end of 2 months of conditioning.

Putting Messi at 20 minutes is hilarious. I’d put him at 16:30-17:30.

He isn’t that type of player though. 18 is very accurate. Tons of mediocre soccer players would be better off running track and xc too. Some pros would be decent distance runners like Gareth Bale. Bale actually could piece together a reputable decathlon in his prime. But Messi is not that fast and greatest skills are that a soccer ball is basically an extra body part for him, he’s very shifty, and has a great soccer iq. I’m amazed how many times someone so tiny gets his head on the ball.

Messi is 10 years older than McTominay with double the wear and tear on his body. There is a reason why Messi does very little pressing, while that is McTominay's bread and butter.

forgot to say what i say in all of these kinds of threads

it is incredibly easy to search a speed position player in the NFL (Defensive Backs/WR/RB) and find their high school track results on athletic.net, they're always sub-11 100m guys.

a couple NBA guys have profiles too, but they're usually state-level jumpers and surprisingly bad sprinters. (like more 100m times above 12 than below)

i dont know any american soccer players so i cant do the same exercise there... anyone have any examples? (...no points awarded if your example is Abby Steiner)

I played intramural soccer with a kid in college who had played soccer his entire life, went out for XC his senior year of HS and ran sub 16 in the 5k. Probably had some in season training and was exceptionally talented but no world class athlete like Messi. Just a rando at my college. 🤷🏻‍♂️

He's only got a left leg

This all sounds about right. The only point on which I’d differ is I think it’s a fair bet that almost all of the players on both teams in the World Cup final could probably run at least as fast as the “few if any” threshold for players at some random high school. They are all superior all-around athletes, and the vast majority of them including the goalies probably put in more total hours of aerobic work in their training than most 16 minute 5K runners do. We had a kid we poached from our mediocre soccer team as a junior who ran a 9:30 2-mile in the first track season of his life - he probably could have run 16 min 5k on his very first day of track practice.

What sort of school did you go to? I went to a public high school with 1600 kids or so and almost no one on the crosscountry team could run 16 flat. One guy in my four years broke 16. If we had 7 guys who could break 18 most meets, that was a good year. We were a very average school and the vast majority of our varisty soccer team were not running sub6 minute pace for a 5k in any world.

I don't believe you

About 3000 kids when I was there, regularly a top 4 team for state in soccer. Usually 3-4 of our varsity squad were soccer guys. We usually had about 15-16 boys breaking 18. Typically you’d need to be breaking 17 to run varsity by the end of the season. One of those soccer guys quit, got dedicated and ran 15:50something and sub 2:00 in the 800m for track. We actually had a soccer kid who would run in his cleats or barefoot and hit low 17:00s. I wouldn’t underestimate soccer players abilities in the Vo2Max/speed endurance realm. They literally just run fartleks, pure speed, and aerobic runs with a ball involved for training.

For that reason I’ll double down on my claim that most pro soccer players would wipe the floor with most highschool athletes from 800-5k. Soccer pulls from a strong genetic pool as compared to running, this argument will further piss people off, but I bet if most high schools switched soccer and distance squads, and trained them, the soccer team would on average do the distance running better than the original distance squad, while the distance squad would underperform at soccer.

Keri Sanchez.

sjsa.org

KERI SANCHEZ

Darren Centi

Link:sjsa.org/keri-sanchez/

ca.milesplit.com

Keri Sanchez - Stats

Link:ca.milesplit.com/athletes/10024511-ker...

amazing that you've managed to squeeze in a late entry for 'dumbest LR post of the year' award