"I find it very ignorant of the American public to just assume Adrian Peterson is wearing 9 for the United States national team, we win the World Cup." Taylor Twellman isn't mincing words — and he's right.
The former soccer player, now analyst, went on Ryen Russillo's show and unloaded on one of American sports media's laziest takes: that NFL and NBA athletes would dominate soccer if they ever bothered to try. Twellman's rebuttal was blunt and grounded in something that argument never accounts for — specificity.
"What position is LeBron going to play at 6'9'' and 260 pounds?" he asked. Good question. Size that dominates a basketball court doesn't translate to a game built on fluid positioning, 90 minutes of continuous movement, and technical precision built over a lifetime. Then Twellman dropped the number that ends the conversation: Messi. 921 career goals. 818 assists. A player who's 5'7" and was told as a child his body wasn't built for elite sport.
The argument Twellman is really making
The deeper point isn't that American athletes are bad. It's that soccer mastery is sport-specific in ways that don't transfer wholesale from the NFL or NBA. Chris Paul committing his whole life to soccer from age five might have produced a very good player. It would not have produced Messi. That's the distinction the lazy version of this argument always skips.
And the evidence is playing out in real time at the 2026 World Cup, where the USMNT's Alex Freeman — son of former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Antonio Freeman — is turning heads as a defender and midfielder. His father had NFL ambitions for him. Soccer had other plans.
"It was soccer every day, all day," Antonio Freeman told ESPN. "He was watching it on his iPad, he was kicking the balls around the house against the furniture... he just grew into the sport."
Freeman's son and the USMNT's group stage finish
That organic development — years of obsession, not a mid-career positional switch — is exactly what Twellman is arguing produces elite soccer players. Alex Freeman didn't arrive at the World Cup because he was athletic enough to convert. He arrived because he dedicated his life to the game.
- Alex Freeman is a defender/midfielder for the USMNT
- His father Antonio Freeman was a wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers
- The USMNT closes out their group stage against Turkey on June 25 (10 p.m. ET)
The US needing a result against Turkey to advance makes Freeman's role worth watching closely — and keeps the broader question alive: can homegrown soccer development, not NFL castoffs, finally build something that lasts past the group stage.
