Does Chad Ochocinco have a shot at making the Sporting roster?
survey software
One of the go-to flamewars on soccer message boards around North America is “Imagine if our best athletes played soccer! Barry Sanders! Deion Sanders! It’d be great!”
The response tends to be something like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. They’d be about as good as Colonel Sanders.”
And then somebody calls someone else a troll, or a noob, or an unprintable clown, and the “discussion” -- I use the term loosely -- devolves into pure name-calling and vitriol.
In other words, a regular day on the internet.
But with Wednesday’s announcement that Chad Ochocinco will be joining Sporting Kansas City for a four-day trial, we’re no longer in the world of message board-theory. A real, honest-to-goodness six-time NFL All-Star (and bona fide soccer lover, let’s not forget) is trying his hand at the beautiful game.
Obviously the odds of him succeeding are long. Ochocinco’s admitted he’s not in game shape and, at age 33, reaching soccer-level fitness will be an uphill battle anyway. In four days, it’s impossible.
But while there are a surfeit of reasons to believe 85 will be 86'ed, there are a number of reasons -- perhaps not an equal number, but a number nonetheless -- to believe he’s worth keeping around through at least the summer to see how he does in reserve games.
1) "Both have the key quality you will find in all the best players: balance”
That’s all-time great George Best talking about fellow all-time greats Diego Maradona and Ruud Gullit. Obviously, Ochocinco won’t be anything approaching that level, but just as obviously he possesses outstanding balance. And that’s the very first physical trait professional scouts look for -- not speed, not strength, not stamina, not quickness. Balance.
For NFL wide receivers, that physical skillset is just as crucial. The ability to be precise when running a route and then turn -- at full-speed -- inside a phone booth is what separates the great from the merely competent.
Ochocinco has that. He knows how to use his body to create space and he always stays on his feet. Physically, he’d be a five-star prospect in our game.
2) Read the game
Soccer, at its very core, is about time and space. Read the game, practice, and develop an instinctual understanding of where the other 21 guys are on the pitch. Watch Real Salt Lake play, and you’ll see a team that’s always moving in concert with one-another, which is why they generate more time on the ball than any other MLS team.
This will be a major hurdle for Ochocinco. You can’t substitute a lifetime of playing the game for theory and muscle-memory. However, there is ample evidence that suggests Ochocinco will have a flatter learning-curve than the typical soccer hopeful.
While much of American football is scripted, there are broken plays and pass routes that demand the same ability to read the intent and positioning of 21 other guys. That’s the same “anticipate, recognize and react” mental gymnastics you see over 90 minutes in soccer.
Yes, in the NFL, that happens in a microcosm. But the fact that Ochocinco has excelled as a broken-route receiver for more than a decade is suggestive of an advanced ability to read positioning and intent.
At the very least, it’ll be illustrative to see how and if he can apply this to soccer.
3) It’s a job
Ochocinco’s always been criticized for his big mouth, not his work-ethic. Even his biggest detractors admit that his capacity for hard work is unquestioned.
Spend any amount of time around elite athletes, and that becomes a very obvious common trait. Talented guys who work hard succeed. Talented guys who don’t, don’t.
Ocho’s already tasted success in one sport. He won’t delude himself as to what it will take for that same taste in another -- especially one that he claims is his first love. He’s been talking about playing soccer for years, and now that he finally has his shot, he’s not going to squander it by putting in anything less than an all-Pro effort.
Now back to your regularly-scheduled internet vitriol.
