white lightning said:
Here is a site that matches some of the worlds top soccer players and rates them on their speed and also their speed with the ball. Pretty interesting to see that Wayne Rooney is one the quickest in the world at just under 21mph. Here is the link for Jimmy Chitwood and the rest of you guys.
http://www.skysports.com/whoisthefastest/index.html
I have come across this before, but take it with a pinch of salt. It's Nike after all, one of the pillars of the sporting caste system. The head-to-head format is obviously not comprehensive, but is based on subjective choices, featuring mainly "cool" black players whom Joe Public has been brainwashed to assume are the fastest because...well, they're Black!
Also, what is the speed based on? If they are just using a computerized player positioning system during a match, then it's pretty meaningless, as it seems to me that a player with better positioning and game reading skills would inevitably end up running slower to the ball, and a player running with the ball would have a speed advantage the less dangerous his position was to the opposition as he would face fewer defenders.
The only authentic way to test speed is with straight sprints and dribbling races.