Having played professional soccer briefly, Chad Johnson has heard this argument more times than he can count. Football athletes are apparently so gifted that if you just handed them a soccer ball, the rest of the world wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s the kind of take that sounds good on paper, but Ochocinco wasn’t about to let it slide without a fight.

When he was asked whether the country’s best athletes could turn the U.S. into a soccer superpower, he didn’t hesitate.

“Absolutely not, it takes more than athletic ability to dominate,” Johnson wrote on X. “You take our best athletes & put them in the favelas or European infrastructure from 4 years old, we would be able to compete & look like we belong. Dominate is a bit far-fetched.”

His timing couldn’t have been more fitting. Just a few days ago, the United States suffered an embarrassing 4-1 defeat to Belgium at the 2026 FIFA World Cup Round of 16, which should have been an iconic performance for them on their own soil. Since making the quarter finals in 2002, this marks the fourth time the USA has been eliminated in the Round of 16.

Folarin Balogun’s suspension being overturned for this match couldn’t help Team USA, whose defense was beyond lackluster.

Longtime soccer writer Leander Schaerlaeckens echoed a similar sentiment when asked whether funneling America’s top athletic talent into soccer would let the country dominate.

“And I think it would help, certainly,” Schaerlaeckens told Michael Easter. “But at the same time, soccer players have a very different body type than NFL players or NBA players. Like, there’s really nobody much taller than 6’4″, 6’5″ in soccer. So, like, if LeBron were a soccer player, would that help us? I’m not so sure. Out of, like, the five greatest soccer players of all time, Cristiano Ronaldo is the only one who’s taller than, like, 5’10”, right? So, these players have a low center of gravity.

“I think it would help if more resources were going into grassroots soccer, and it was more affordable for more people.”

However, there’s not much to help soccer when the American football is still the dominant sport in the country.

On the Unfiltered Soccer podcast, Jason Kelce admitted that the country loses its best athletes to other sports. But as Johnson said, soccer demands a “different type of athleticsism” compared to any other sport. And unlike football, where athletes can develop into pros even if they never played the game, soccer doesn’t have that luxury. One has to start playing at a very young age to make the highest levels in the sport.

That’s the gap America still hasn’t closed.