CHAPTER 1
The Ten Most Important Skills of Soccer according to Coach Farley
The skills to play soccer are arranged in 10 independently separate disciplines.
Discipline skills 1 through 4 are mental and physical conditioning skills needed to better execute the game of Soccer.
Discipline skills 5 through 10 are the field skills needed to play the game.
#1) MENTAL ATTITUDE
Mental attitude can bring either success or deny success. Attitude is willed by the human. It may be positive or negative. We must, as humans, continually cultivate appetites for foundationally strong personal positive attitudes. Negative attitudes destroy optimism, bring destruction and chaos, and undermine personal confidence. A strong negative attitude can affect the realm of those individuals within the influence range of the negative attitude sender. Players must be encouraged and taught to continually seek out a positive attitude. The coach is always the first example of manifesting strong positive mental attitudes. There are aids for developing and maintaining strong positive attitudes. One I highly recommend is the practice of MEDITATION. Meditation is not as prominent in Western culture as it is in Eastern culture. Meditation is not sleeping. When I was young, meditation was a little “off the wall”, so to speak. However, meditation has been scientifically proven to be a positive activity in developing mind strength. Some refer to the steady practice of meditation as mind rest. The benefits of a meditative type of activity, having been taken into a daily life style, will over-power tension, aid in the individual control of personal blood pressure, dissipate distress, and increase the listening skills of the user. There are volumes of physiological studies on the positive attributes of quiet. It is not the goal of the leader (coach, teacher, parent, boss, etc.) to initiate deep educational courses in the art of meditation, but rather, simple, quick, ten minute exercises that can result in bringing deeper focus to the individual’s mind and task at hand.
#5) JUGGLING SKILL
This skill will improve the player’s dribbling, passing, trapping, and general ball control skills. Developing a consistent Juggling Skill as soon as possible is extremely helpful to the young soccer player. Juggling is keeping the ball in the air with your feet primarily, but also using your knees and head, I refer to these as ‘touches’. Over the years I have told the teams early in the season that when a player reaches 20 touches in a row, in front of a coach or a parent, the achievement was worth a reward of $20. The parents would squawk loudly. I explained to the parents that achieving the goal of 20 touches is very difficult. A beginning player would have to attempt to reach 20 touches hundreds of times and fail before accomplishing this skill consistently, on demand. Further, the player would experience an easier effort going from 20 touches to 50 touches than it was going from 0 to 20. When the player is able to master at least 50 touches, he will become a key figure for the team. See Figure 15 and 16 for an example of juggling.
#8) PASSING AND TRAPPING SKILLS
In his book, Brian Glanville records how, in the middle 1800s, British football teams were very successful because of their “....dribbling expertise. But then later, along came the Scottish with their brilliant passing and trapping skills. And ever since, the best skilled passing and trapping team would win the day” (Glanville, pg22).
Passing skills and trapping skills are two different sides of the same coin. They are of the same blood. They are not cousins, but twin brothers. When developed correctly, they are the most overriding, dominant force that a soccer player can bring to a competition. These are true weapon skills. Young players want to kick the soccer ball with their toes. This behavior must be stopped during the first practice and heavily discouraged thereafter. When the ball is kicked with the toe there is no control whatsoever. With a correct soccer pass, the ball touches the foot most often on the inside of the foot near to the arch of the foot, or the ball is passed with contact from the outside of the shoe near to the arch and on rare occasion from the heel of the foot, backwards. The high velocity soccer pass comes off the shoe laces of the shoe. This skill is usually developed during the 7th or 8th grade seasons. Developing a good accurate pass from the arch of the foot of the players in grade school level soccer is one of the primary goals of the grade school soccer coach. Also, there is the Bowling Ball kick. Children understand that bowling balls do not leave the ground. The players try to develop good bowling ball kicks because a soccer pass that stays on the ground is easier to trap and control than a pass that is bouncing all over the place. Watch the professional soccer players, 90% of their passes are Bowling ball kicks. Refer to Figure 24 – Bowling ball kick with inside of foot.
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