Watch this video, it really does show a nice skill from Zizou.
Archive for the 'Learn Football' Category
Football is a dynamic, fast-moving sport. Throughout a game, pockets of space open and close all over the pitch. A player who has an awareness of where space exists or where it will shortly open up is a great asset to a team.
Equally valuable is the ability to move into the space to receive a pass. The more space a player is in, the more time he or she usually has to receive the ball, control it and attack with it. The ball can zip around a pitch far more quickly than even the fastest of players. Good footballers make the ball do the work, moving it around with quick, accurate passes. Vision is the priceless ability to spot a pass, space or goal-scoring opportunity which other players do not see, or before they do.
How do you avoid fatigue in order that you remain fit and healthy like Zidane, who was able to play a gruelling 90-minute match even at the age of 34 years? Obviously the first option is to ensure that you are sleeping enough. Nutrition also plays a role and make sure that you are taking a lot of good food with nutrients. If you have a good rest and take nutrients but still feel the sensation of fatigue, it may be stress-related because of your impending plastic surgery and nothing eases stress more than sexual activity does. Do make love to your partner at least three times a week to relieve stress and share the love with him or her.
Football has to be one of the original sports games every played by people. I can just imagine cave dwellers kicking around the old football in the form of a coconut or a stone. It has got to be one of the simplest form of sports play imaginable. I mean, really, I kick the ball this way and you try to kick the ball that way. Whether the ball (coconut?) goes more this way or more that way determines the winner. While it may be easy for me to imagine soccer being kicked around by a bunch of caveman sports enthusiasts, the earliest official record of soccer by played was in China about 3000 years ago. Wow, that’s like 750 World Cups, if anyone was keeping track.
Football is also kind of bizarre, in that it’s one of the few sports I can think of where you use your head for more than just strategizing. You actually can use your head to make contact with the ball. Imagine trying that in American football or hockey for that matter. Nothing link deflecting a slapshot with the forehead for a game-winning goal. Stitches don’t hurt that much. Those football guys are kinda funny that way. But the ultimate head-shot in football was a little more bizarre. Gruesome actually. Apparently in more medieval times, the head of a defeated Danish prince was used as the ball by early-day football hooligans in the east of England. Yuck. Think I’d be shopping for some new football shoes after that match. It’s a wonder football ever caught on with the Danes after a defeat like that one.
Stretch is a good football term. One that every good coach should understand and teach his players, whether they are playing in real estate in Del Mar or in rural areas. Let us make this simple. Take a rubber band and “stretch” it. The bigger you make the opening in the rubber band, the larger the box you can put it around. But if you stretch too much, the band may break, but that’s like the defense, and more on that later.
In football terms, when you have possession of the ball you want to stretch the field in width. By playing to the sidelines you open space that you can exploit against your opponents. Keep in mind the term of “playing to the touchlines”. If you only stretch within 8-10 yards of the touchline you leave space between yourself and the boundary that is difficult for your players to utilize before the ball goes out of bounds.
Remember, you can only use the space that is in front of you. Defenses like to be compact. That restricts space and makes it easier to defend. It’s like trying to get a string that is already tied into a loop around that box. It is tough to do if the string will not stretch.
Some of the world’s best football players were interviewed about how they first come to know about the sport. The above picture is that of a young Ronaldinho learning his trade. He does look like he could use nose surgery though.
HOW I LEARNED TO PLAY…
RONALDINHO
“I spent a lot of time training at Gremio. After training I went to play futsal. After that I’d play with my friends in the streets and when I got home I played with my brother. My life is football and always has been.”
ZINEDINE ZIDANE
“Everything I have achieved in football is due to playing in the streets with my friends.”
DIEGO MARADONA
“I guess we were potrero (waste ground) children more than anything. If our parents were looking for us, they knew where to find us. We would always be there on the potrero, running after the ball.”
RONALDO
“Every time I went away, I was deceiving my mum. I’d tell her I was going to school, but I’d be out on the street playing football. I always had a ball at my feet. In Brazil, every kid starts playing street football very early. It’s in our blood.”
Continue reading ‘The answer for our kids is still jumpers for goalposts’
With young players, the hardest, and in my opinion, the most important single aspect to get across is that the closest person to the opponent with the football does not have the responsibility to win the ball! Once defenders understand this, about 90% of diving in is eliminated and the attackers job becomes much harder. It also reinforces the next most important concept: that somebody had better be moving to cover the space behind the closest defender! That is the player who will, most often, wind up winning the ball.
You can demonstrate this quite easily by selecting the best defensive soccer player on the team, placing that player isolated out on the pitch, point to a goal for him or her to defend, and then tell them to “get the ball” from you. Then, simply dribble up to the player, push the ball past, into space, and run onto it. If you can get the defender to step towards you, you can do this quite easily.