Marketing is a different job function, on a different team - in both engineering and in soccer. You are thinking members of the same team (soccer/engineering) vs members of different teams (marketing)

No this is on point. Managers often have multiple people on different roles but are still forced to stack rank them as if they are equally comparable. The analogy is sound and illustrates the problem.

Also, you do realise that then on the same team the engineers may not be doing 1-1 comparable work right?