How fast could Messi run the 5k?

He could run much faster than that.

I agree

Prob between 15 high to 16 mid. Think about it: tons of mediocre soccer players who also do XC/TF have similar PRs. It wouldn’t be out of the question for him to break 16 as a world class athlete, even with lack of notice

Messi weighs 148lbs according to FIFA’s website

Letsrunners weirdly overestimate distance running abilities of athletes in other sports just based on their general fitness. Running a 16’ 5K takes some training, and it’s entirely possible to be able to walk 85% of the time interspersed by rapid short sprints like Messi does on field without being aerobically strong enough to run a fast 5K.

Would think he would be ok in a 5k but his ideal distance is probably an 800. He could likely pop a 1:52-54 right now

More like 1:58-9

premier league players running 5ks was literally a thing in early covid and several of them literally faked mediocre 5k times

metro.co.uk

Chelsea midfielder Ross Barkley accused of ‘fake’ 5k time

Chris Davie

Something fishy going on.

Link:metro.co.uk/2020/04/21/chelsea-midfiel...

Messi is the most efficient player around. Amazing coordination and football sense. He's an incredible soccer player. Runs as little as he needs to. Unlike David Beckham and some others, his devotion to football was no loss to middle distance running from a talent perspective.

He could probably run walk run (10 seconds walking for every minute run) his way to a 17:10.

Messi would never run that much.

There's no way he could run a 16 minute 5K. 17 is also very doubtful.

I would put him around 18:40-20:00 and that is perfectly fine for a football player. Sprintng is more important.

Is there a correlation between level of play in soccer and distance running ability? I doubt it.

There must be data from internal fitness tests (like Cooper or similar) of soccer teams that could give decent estimates for e.g. 800m or 5000m runs but they are not public at the elite level, I guess. I think one should be wary with data from teenagers playing soccer and running mid/distance or coming to running from soccer because they are usually way above average in mid distance running ability compared to other soccer players.

Messi is also quite old, I don't think he would be a good in running as players 10 years younger. 5k would be also quite long for them, I'd guess they'd do relatively better in 800-3000m.

Bournemouth FC uploaded a video to YouTube of them giving their players mile time trials as part of pre-season training. As far as I can recall, nearly all the players ran comfortably under 6 minutes. Somebody posted it here as 'proof that soccer players can't run distance', which is silly as it was pre-season when the whole point was to get back their fitness after the summer break, and had probably already trained for hours that day. I think they did it in soccer boots as well. And of course, Bournemouth FC, although an English Premier league team, are hardly Messi level.

Bournemouth are not Messi level as soccer player, but I don't think Messi is necessarily in a different class in running fitness (at least not compared to their best runners). More importantly, sub 6 min mile is a rather low threshold. I'd expect some high level soccer players, especially midfielders to run around/sub 5 miles.

I recall in my youth at school 14-15 year old boys running around/sub 3 min 1k just from soccer training (of course these were among the best runners among the soccer players, not average). But that's quite a bit from 17-18 min 5k and I'd expect soccer players to be relatively best at 800-mile or even 400-800.

Few if any would run 16 min. 5k, more would run sub 10 3k or 5 min mile. But I think considerably better marks to be very rare although more would get there with a few months of specialized training.

Didn't he run 13:22 at Valentine?