Become A Better Footballer

6 Steps To Become A Better Footballer

Football, or soccer, is a world-wide known sport and it moves millions every year. Some professional players like Messi or Cristiano get payed up to hundreds per minute! So if you think you'd like to become a professional player but don't think you can because you are not good enough, Change your mind! Here are the best tips to become better at soccer.

by Kevin Zhou.

1. Relax and think fast.

The most important thing in football is not being scared of the ball. Being afraid of losing the ball or passing the ball to the wrong guy is just the worse. I can say this because I used to be like that. But no problem, there's a solution to that. First of all lose your fear to the ball, if you lose it you can get it back so calm down. Second, think fast. But not just fast, think even before the ball gets to you, even if you don't know if they're going to pass the ball to you. Be always thinking of what will be the next step so when you get the ball you can get it to the next player as fast as possible.

2. Get guts!

Before I talked about being able to retrieve the ball when you lose it, well I lied a bit. If you don't have the guts to go face to face against your adversary you'll never get the the ball back. And I don't mean that you should go directly to hit the other players leg, you need to be careful. What I mean is that when your going to go for the ball, go harder than him never easier. If you go harder and hit stronger you'll get the ball 100% of the times or at least you'll stop him. And again, be careful or you might get ejected. 

3. Being smart.

When you're winning a match with a tight score the best thing to do is waste time. It's a dirty thing to do but football is more than just skill so no problem. Some of the best ways to waste time are:

• Pretend that you're injured and lay in the ground. This is quite dirty and you'll get criticized by the crowd so so it just when the end is near. The referee will have to pause the match when he sees you in the ground and make sure you're ok. When he comes pretend that you're slowly recovering, stand up as slow as possible and keep playing.
• Try to hold the ball as much time as possible. If holding the ball means having the ball in the defense going from one side to the other for 5 mins do it. This isn't seen as bad as the first point but someone will criticize for the match being boring (mostly crowd from the losing team) but that doesn't matter, you've come to win. This also has a good point which is that the contrary team will come to your side for the ball, so if they do something wrong, you can take advantage of it and cause a counterattack and score.
• Kicking the bar as far as possible. When there's little time left kick the ball as far as possible so someone has to go pick it or they have to get a new ball. This might not seem very effective but I can assure you it is.

4. Knowing when to tackle.

Doing a tackle is very useful and is a clever way to stop a player. Tackles, unless really neccesary, should be done from midfield to their side, and try to avoid them when the ball is close to your goal. Also the time to do them is when the other team is counterattacking and you have few players left in your side. By doing this your team will have time to get back to their places.

5. Train and practice with your team as much as possible.

It doesn't matter how good you are, in a match you depend on your team, so try to get each other better. Knowing wich foot your teammates use or wether they like balls to the foot or larger passes is very important. If every player on the team knows each other well, yo will all play more comfortably.

6. Put effort into it.

Playing without effort and reluctantly is the worst thing to do. When you play football, forget about everything. Forget your in a match, forget how important that match is, forget about doing something wrong... I know this is not easy because I used to have the same feelings but try to get rid of these feelings. Play for the fun, put all your effort in and I'm sure you'll grow as a player.

As you can see, soccer in the end is nothing but guts, effort and doing some trickery. If you follow this tips I can assure that you'll improve and grow as a football player. Let me know if you sin't understand something and thanks for reading.



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