I think the cross-sport-training point can be stretched too far, though, as well. Training environment at the young ages also has an effect - the article mentions Mousa Dembele and his lack of shooting being attributed to how he played football on basketball courts as a kid and so had to score by walking the ball up to the goal. With Skrtel, I could totally get your point about ice hockey (I don't know enough about it), but there's also the fact that in the former Czechoslovakia, and after it broke up, the game was built around a stopper/sweeper system, and Skrtel's actions looked to me always to have been the mentality of a sweeper, the eternal covering defender - and under Brendan at least, it didn't surprise me at the time that his best form came when he was playing the de facto sweeper to Lucas' stopper when we played that 3-4-2-1 formation (the only time we were defensively solid under Brendan).
For Oxlade, I could see the physicality of Rugby enhancing his direct running, but I think the author of that article stretched the point too much when he commented on his lack of penetrative passing, given that he was, at the time, playing for one of the most lateral-passing sides of the modern era in Arsenal
But you're right - nurture as much as nature sets the parameters around which way players will go as they develop, and cross-sport-participation probably feeds into that - but certainly not as much as that article writer wanted people to believe.
