Usain Bolt is not very good at football, but he genuinely believes he is.
The former nine-time, current eight-time Olympic gold medallist might stake a claim to be the greatest athlete in human history, but almost none of his accolades have been achieved with ball at feet.
The long-time Manchester United fan once trained with the club alongside his favourite players, and recently announced that he'll do the same with Borussia Dortmund. Incidentally, Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke told Kicker magazine back in November that “it was no joke” and “not a marketing move,” before Dortmund striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang almost instantaneously challenged the athletics icon to a 30-metre sprint, presumably for the content.
In any case, Bolt has always been of the sincere belief that he could make it as a top-echelon footballer if he applied himself to the field instead of the track. Now 30, Bolt's belief is tinged with pragmatism, but it still didn't stop him from taking an inadvertent dig at his chum Wayne Rooney when attempting to describe the level he felt he could reach if he abandoned athletics for football.
I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna say I'm gonna be the best footballer in the world, but I would be a good level I would say, you know what I mean? Maybe Wayne Rooney-level... Just sayin'.
The "Just sayin'" made it seem a far more cutting assessment than was necessary.
Of course it's unlikely that Bolt intended to cause any offence to Rooney, but it did confirm that the ardent United fan perceives his club's all-time top goalscorer a level below the greats of the game.
Meanwhile, here is Bolt playing football against the wishes of the Jamaican athletic powers-that-be back in 2012. He's really not great.
