39 former pro soccer legend, David Villa, runs 38:09 -10km in Madrid. Very impressive.

David Villa, 39 years old, after his 38:09/10 km in Madrid, January 1, 2021.

Villa cruising at right around 6 mins per mile for 10km, impressive for pro soccer player, especially at 39 years old.

Nice to see a former athlete staying in shape, but that's not an impressive time. No one is "raving," and he is not about to start busting his @ss to be a competitive master.

Villa and training mates.

Villa showing sick skills in his heyday on the pitch.

I ran a faster 10K when I was older...but my soccer career ended in HS.

roller coaster wrote:

Nice to see a former athlete staying in shape, but that's not an impressive time. No one is "raving," and he is not about to start busting his @ss to be a competitive master.

This. Cool but not "very impressive".

Is he also a very nice guy who prays every day?

Yo Sara ian wrote:

Is he also a very nice guy who prays every day?

Yep he seems to be a really nice guy but not sure if he prays every day.

He comes from a very humble background, his parents were farmers.

He’s very unassuming and talk to everybody. Is the total opposite to people like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ghost1 wrote:

Yo Sara ian wrote:

Is he also a very nice guy who prays every day?

Yep he seems to be a really nice guy but not sure if he prays every day.

He comes from a very humble background, his parents were farmers.

He’s very unassuming and talk to everybody. Is the total opposite to people like Cristiano Ronaldo.

As I suspected. A virtual saint and even if he wasn't his humble background would save him.

Professional soccer players are in excellent shape and do a lot of running. Certainly a solid performance but not very surprising.

It's certainly very respectable but it's really not that impressive.

I mean, if you had said that your 39 year old plumber who took up running 6 weeks ago, ran a sub 40 10k, then I'd be moderatelyy impressed.

David Villa

Height and weight as a player was 1 m 75 and 68 kg

For Americans this means 5‘9“ tall and 150 pounds

Going by pictorial evidence these days he looks a bit heavier

I would say around 72 to 74 kg/ 160-165 pounds.

fhnhgfcxghjn wrote:

It's certainly very respectable but it's really not that impressive.

I mean, if you had said that your 39 year old plumber who took up running 6 weeks ago, ran a sub 40 10k, then I'd be moderatelyy impressed.

You make some good points. The thing about soccer players is that they never run sustained speed at around five or six minutes per mile for a long stretch. They are either running very fast in sprints or just jogging slowly it is either one or the other but they are almost never in the intermediate bracket of running 5 or 6 mins mile pace for anything long and when I say “long I mean anything longer than about 400 m. This is why sustained running for a 5 km or 10 km race is something which is really quite alien to professional soccer players because they almost never do it. Have you ever seen soccer players and I mean professional ones do their running on the pitch either before or after practice? It is always very, very slow and anyone, even your grandmother, could probably keep up.

With all of this in mind getting to run sustained speed of around six minutes per mile for half an hour is quite a tall order for most professional soccer players because their bodies are just not used to that type of effort because it is not useful in professional soccer playing to develop that type of effort.

Lol.

I'm glad for David Villa.

He is a great player and got a good time.

But this is what is ultimately confusing about letsrun.

He runs a 38:09 and it's great and I run a 42:27, and I'm a sloppy fat pig..because people know David Villa?

It's all too strange sometimes.

Mr Smith, if you improve your PB from 42 minutes to 38 minutes for 10 km then we will be raving about you all over the Internet and we will make sure to highlight your achievement because believe me there’s a big difference between 42 minutes and 38 minutes for 10 km even though you may not see it that way. In addition, in my previous post I outlined why soccer players are not necessarily suited to endurance running - what I mean by sustained decent speed endurance running because of the nature of the sport.

Not to rain on the parade about this footballer doing a 38-min 10K, but he should be able to run that fast. I used to coach soccer from age U6 up to U18 gold and the 17-year-olds could all run 34-44-minute 10k without specific training. Maybe the goaltender, a big kid was slower like 50 minutes....

I got my senior coaching certification from a div. 2 guy, who went to a 35+ plus team. He ran 36-minutes with no specific training at age 41. Div. 2 isn't THAT good of soccer - it's okay.

Soccer players can run 5-8k in a game, especially centre-mids. With warm-up, warm-down and extra running practice at practice, they run more than any other sport outside of athletics. I was especially focussed on the warm-up and running at practice for the U18 golds and because of that they were sharp at the end of the game and could run.

However, I have seen some Div. 1 and premiere players who run like shyte. But not many.

Yep you’re right, they cover a lot of ground but much of that ground is covered in a match basically walking or just jogging very slowly before they launch out into a full out sprint for a few seconds then repeat. The point is soccer players rarely run tempo runs of 20 to 30 minutes continuous at a good pace and that is why running 10 km add a good pace such as 35 minutes would be a tall order for most soccer players including professional ones.

In addition, most elite soccer players are mesomorphs rather than ectomorphs, with a guy like Angel DiMaria being an exception to the rule.

Angel Di Maria, Argentina and Paris Saint Germain - rare ectomorph in elite soccer.

https://images.app.goo.gl/HQfdtyZGsDrE79D97