How to be good at soccer (football!)

Being physically fit and practicing your skills will make you good at any sport. But sometimes you just don’t have time to practice, you’re just not a very physically adept person, or you are already good at that stuff and want to know how to get better. So you need to learn to think soccer. By the way: my apologies to the rest of the world, who (most reasonably) refer to this sport as football.

Some of these tips will actually apply to any sport, but I’m thinking about soccer as I write this. I’m not a very good soccer player myself, but I am a thinker and I’m very observant, so I think my advice will be good anyway. (Coaches are sometimes not very good at the sport they coach; it’s knowledge of the sport, not skill, that really matters.)

If you’re an “advanced” player (on a college team, or high school varsity maybe, or if you follow professional soccer sufficiently avidly), this stuff will probably be old hat.

* Learn to keep track of the other players. If you only know where people are when they’re in your line of sight, you’re vulnerable to attack from behind, and you might miss a key play when you don’t realize that one of your teammates is in a good position. When you last glance at the field, try to keep track of where everyone is, what direction they’re going, what they seem to be trying to do, etc. Then if you have to take control of a long pass or something, you won’t have to re-adjust to where everyone has moved to while you were looking at the ball. This skill is also really useful for making good cuts.
* Don’t get too close to your teammates. The only useful thing you can do when you’re really close to one of your teammates is screen, and that’s against the rules. If your teammate is in trouble, probably passing to you won’t help much — the two guys double teaming him will just switch to you. If your teammate isn’t in trouble, or if your teammate doesn’t have the ball, you aren’t helping by being near him either. You might be blocking his view, and you’re making it easier for the other team to cover both of you at once. Spread out. An opponent might move to cover you and give your teammate an opportunity to cut; you might find yourself open for a pass and a good play; you might be able to create a give-and-go opportunity for your teammate (he passes to you and runs past his defender and then you pass right back to him).

* Rest strategically. This is very important because soccer requires so much sprinting. You can’t just run yourself down till you’re exhausted and then half-walk, half-jog around for the rest of the game. You also shouldn’t go up on offense and then get lazy and refuse to come back to help defend when your team is in trouble. You can do better than this by optimizing your resting. When there’s nothing for you to do, even if it’s only a brief moment, that should be a cue for you to get a bit of rest. If you take every opportunity to recover your strength, you’ll have the energy to put pressure on defense or keep making good cuts on offense late into the game; if you do it strategically, you won’t cost your team anything during your rests, either.

* Don’t waste energy on worthless plays. This goes with the previous one. Too often I see players sprinting after a ball that they have no chance of stopping, or going all-out trying to make something out of a hopeless play. If you do this too much, you’ll expend a lot of you energy getting nothing for your team, and you’ll be too tired later on to capitalize on good opportunities. Don’t try to take on the other team’s entire defense by yourself. Slow down and let your teammates catch up. Don’t sprint when there’s no pressure or when a ball has gone out of bounds. Save it, and you’ll still have the energy left at the end of the game for that run half-way down the field for a miracle 88th minute goal. Or whatever.

* Be in the right place at the right time. A lot of times, a good play in soccer doesn’t have anything to do with technical abilities. It’s only to do with opportunity. Especially when there’s a break in the play or the ball is far away from you, you should be thinking about what opportunities you can create, or what opportunities you can deny the opponents. If you see an opening in the opponents’ defense, try to get near it so you’ll be in position to cut through when your teammate sees you and passes the ball up. That kind of thing can make a more effective play than any amount of ball-handling skill.

* Don’t compete with your teammates. Don’t double-team on defense if you don’t have to. Don’t cut and call for a pass right at the same time as one of your teammates. Don’t try to create an opportunity on the left wing if one of your teammates is also trying to make a play on that part of the field. This will help you save energy, for one thing. If your teammate is already doing something (which takes only one man), then you shouldn’t waste energy by running to do the same thing. Also, it improves your team’s efficiency. If your teammate’s cut doesn’t work, you’re ready to cut right as soon as you realize that. If your teammate’s cut does work, you’re not in the middle of your own cut when he gets the pass, so you can react faster to the new situation. On defense, if your teammate is running up to cover the guy with the ball, instead of “helping” you should be filling up an opening so that their other guy can’t cut through, or covering a guy who’s already up there so you can limit their options.

* Involve your entire team. It’s very tempting to always pass to the best player on your team. He’s the “playmaker”, the goal scorer, the guy who can juggle the ball indefinitely and do amazing tricks. Why not give him the ball as much as possible? (Or if you are that guy, why shouldn’t you have the ball most of the time?) There are several reasons. This strategy actually makes it easier on the other team. They know that they only have to focus on covering one or two “star” players on your team, and they can be more lax about the other players. They’ll have an easy time predicting your plays, etc. etc. Also, if all of your players are involved, then you can cover more space. One man on offense is almost never going to find a hole; he has to manufacture the plays on his own because the entire defense will be on him. But if you have three men up there, they can spread out, and maybe the defense will leave an opening for one of them to cut through — you’ll be able to pass to him and give him an open shot. If the opponents never know who’s going to receive the next pass, and they’re never sure whether the next move will be another pass or a drive to the goal, they’ll have a much harder time defending against you. (Also, making an effort to include less skilled players will make them more motivated to play hard. This is especially important in informal or low-key games — it’s no fun if you exclude the players who aren’t that great.)

* Don’t follow the ball. I’m often shocked by how great players fail to adhere to this basic principle. The ball moves faster than you can. Don’t even try! You’ll also often end up violating some of the other principles (don’t get too close to your teammates, and don’t compete with your teammates) if you follow the ball too much. This is especially a problem on defense. If you run up to the guy on the other team who has the ball, and he passes it, don’t chase after the ball! You’re leaving that guy wide open! You should trust your teammates to be covering the guy who just received the ball. (If you can’t trust your teammates to do that, your team needs to work on its D.) If the guy who just passed the ball isn’t doing anything and can be safely left, don’t assume that following the ball is the best alternative. Look and see if any of their other guys are still open. Look to see if there’s a hole in your defense. Think about what they’re likely to try to do, and get in the way of it. Running towards the ball might just make things easier for them. Similarly, on offense, being nearer to the ball isn’t always going to make it more likely (or a better play) for your teammate to pass the ball to you. Worry more about creating opportunities for good plays. Sometimes that means running away from the ball. It’s okay!

* It’s not all about you. Often you have opportunities to do really cool stuff. Someone sends you a long pass and you could just kick it in the air instead of controlling it first and looking for a good shot. It would be pretty sweet if you scored the former way, but if you do the less fancy thing, you’ll be much more likely to score. Also, you shouldn’t shoot at every opportunity. Soccer is a passing game. If you have a bit of a shot, you should consider taking it, but you should also be aware of your teammates and you should check whether they might have a better opportunity. Also, if you’ve got the ball and a defender (or two) comes up to you, don’t let anything stop you from passing to your teammate who’s still open. You may be able to pull off some fancy footwork to get around them, and if you know you’re better than they are then it will be very tempting, but this is just not a good play. Your teammate is wide open. He might already have a shot, or at least a clear path to the goal, especially if you’re about to be double-teamed. Or maybe he can just hold the ball for you while you run past the defenders unencumbered. Really, in that kind of situation, there’s virtually no advantage to ball-hogging. Remember, there’s probably no one videotaping, so you shouldn’t feel an obligation to try to create YouTube-worthy scenarios with yourself as the hero. You’re going to miss the shot or lose the ball and look like an ass when it turns out that there was actually a much safer (but less fancy) play available.

* Remember that this stuff applies to you! Especially if you watch pro football, you probably know immediately that all of these things are good ideas. But a lot of my friends have watched plenty of pro matches, and they still don’t remember that these things they see on TV and read about in the papers are actually good ideas for them to do, too! So don’t just tell yourself “yeah, I know all of this, it was a waste of time to read this post” or “that was interesting, I feel enlightened now, next blog please.” In order to actually get better from this kind of advice, you need to actively think about it when you’re playing. Being good at a sport isn’t just about using your physical abilities. Turn on your brain too, and you’ll have a huge advantage over the players who don’t!

Well, I hope some of these tips are helpful for you. I wish the people I play with would follow these! We’d probably dominate our league if we did.

I guess I should admit that I don’t follow all of them perfectly myself. It’s not easy to behave like a pro player, even when you think you know how and you’re thinking about it during the game. It takes a lot of intuition, an ability to understand what’s going on across the entire field all the time, good judgment and foresight, and intimate knowledge of your own and your teammates’ abilities. But don’t despair! Though this advice might not turn you into a pro overnight, if you follow these tenets and apply good judgment, you’ll surely see your soccer skills improving.