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Practice Your Soccer Moves
There are millions of ways to train your body to use a wide variety of soccer moves. Feel free to get creative with your training methods: As a kid, I would act like the weeds were defenders and dribble in and out of them in the yard or at the park, cutting back and forth as I dribbled, trying to avoid hitting the weeds with the ball. There are also some standard ways you can use to improve your game:
Touch the Ball with Every Step
When you’re training, get in the habit of touching the ball with each step you take. In very quick succession, touch the ball a little bit ahead of you. This will create both good control and increase your dribbling speed. Exaggerate this when you’re starting out.
With this kind of control, you can elude defenders when they try to steal the ball. You can easily cut the ball away since it’s always close to you. This will give you much greater control when you are dribbling. It’s almost like you’re trying to get as many touches in as you can while you dribble forward with the ball.
Pace Yourself
Change of pace is the key to beating a player on the dribble. You don't necessarily need great speed to go by someone. You just need to "lull the defender to sleep" for a second, and then break past the opponent with a burst of speed.
Improving Your Weak Foot
The best advice is to just use it. Continue to strike the ball against a wall with your weak foot. If you practice consistently, slowly but surely you will see an improvement. Have patience.
Keep in mind that there are always exceptions. If you look at one of the best players in the world, the Brazilian midfielder Rivaldo, he mainly uses his left foot. His left foot is so incredible and he positions his body so well to protect the ball that he can get away with not using his right foot. He is a gifted and unique exception. To learn more about Rivaldo click here - Rivaldo.
Drills to Help You on Your Way
A great drill is simply weaving in and out of a set of cones. Make variations of the drill and put rules on yourself to make it more difficult.
Place about 10 cones in a line about three yards apart and dribble in and out of each cone without touching or knocking over the cones. Try not to touch the ball too far away from the line of cones either. Make sharp turns when you are going back through the line.
After you have mastered this, you can then vary the way that you dribble through the cones. Try dribbling with just the right foot and then just with the left foot, and then alternating feet, where you touch (pass) the ball to the left and then to the right as you weave through the cones. Then try just with the inside of the feet, and so on. Make up restrictions to put on yourself to try to improve a specific part of your dribbling technique.
Also, try combining a shooting or trapping drill with a dribbling drill. Much like an obstacle course, have one line at the other end of the field, a player posting up about thirty yards away, a series of cones to dribble through off to the side, and a player posting up at the top of the box.
The player in line hits a long ball to the first player posting up, who lays the ball back to the player who then dribbles through the cones and plays a ball to the second player posting up, who then lays the ball back to the player for a shot on goal. Do the same going the other direction to the other goal. You’ll need two keepers and a whole field, but it’s a great drill where you can combine a number of different skills. Make sure to rotate each position.
A key with any practice is to keep it flowing and not have a lot of stops and starts and too many people standing in line. You don’t want players to get warmed up and then get cold and bored waiting in line. Make sure you plan out a good practice and make adjustments when needed. Move into each new drill without a lot of standing around and waiting.
Soccer Move Highlight Clips
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