Lionel Messi and Height Advantage
Being physically fit is a natural trait for most athletes, their careers depend on it. Sports are very demanding and they are taxing on a sports person's body. How much though do other factors affect an athlete's performance; factors they cannot control such as how tall they are for example or whether they are right handed or left handed?
Does the height of an athlete affect his or her abilities on the field and if so then to what degree? Besides basketball do sports players who play cricket or football see a difference in their performance levels over other because of a height advantage?
The question of whether an athlete's height really matters in sports other than basketball came about because of an article that quoted a former Japanese coach telling the Japanese football team not to worry about the fact that other teams were taller than them and take the example of Lionel Messi of Argentina who is 5' 7".
He stated the following in trying to get his former team to forget about their size and concentrate on performance, "It is not basketball we are talking about here and besides, look at Lionel Messi, he is even smaller than most Japanese and he is the best player in the world," It seems the question of how tall they were was definitely on the minds of the Japanese squad.
The issue of height in football seems to affect a team when it comes to winning the ball in the air. Anyone that is tall has a distinct advantage over smaller players in being able to head the ball better.
The tallest player at the moment in the World Cup is Nikola Zigic of Serbia. He stands a massive 6 foot 7 inches in height and uses it to his advantage a lot of the time to win the ball in the air. England's Peter Crouch is another very tall player and he gets his head behind the ball on numerous occasions. He stands an impressive 6' 6" tall.
There are advantages to being a tall goalkeeper as well because the taller a goalkeeper is the more of the goal can be covered by sheer height alone. It doesn't mean a smaller goalkeeper who can dive strongly won't be equally as good but a tall one has a natural advantage. The tallest goalkeeper in the World Cup at the moment is the Greek goalie Konstantinos Chalkias who stands at 6' 5" tall.
Now we come to the real advantages of being tall in sports. By being tall what distinct advantages does an athlete have over a shorter one. First and foremost is the ability to reach and step further. Being taller implies longer arms and legs, in turn meaning longer reach ability and longer stride ability. This is a tremendous advantage in many sports, but in particular field sports.
An example of how height can help an athlete is the former West Indian cricketer Curtly Ambrose who stood at a huge 6' 7" tall and the sight of him charging down the field to bowl a fast ball probably scared many batsmen at the time. He may have been able to put his height into his deliveries as well and that could be a reason why he was such a good bowler for his team.
Where does that leave shorter players, should they go home? Well no, not really because at the end of the day a lot of sports are about talent, performance, skill and heart. If it was about height only then all sports would be filled with tall players. But they aren't and some of the world's best players are of average height. They make up their lack of inches with being phenomenally good at what they do.
As the former Japanese coach rightly stated in the quote above that Lionel Messi despite being shorter than most players was still the best footballer in the world. So at the end of the day even though being tall helps it shouldn't be taken as a hard and fast rule. There have even been short players in basketball, a sport known for only having tall players in it. All short people shouldn't give up their dream of becoming international sports stars just yet.
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