Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today's subject will deal with chipping and knowing how to receive
a chip.
So much emphasis is put on keeping the ball on the ground and playing simple that there seems to be a
surprising inability to play an accurate ball in the air and be able to handle it properly.
The technical side of chipping is quite simple. Pick a spot on the ball that is below the middle part of
the ball. By making contact on the bottom half of the ball, the ball will rise. This is pretty simple
to do but very difficult to do consistently well. The lower you make contact on the ball, the higher
the trajectory the ball will take.
To practice chipping, simply start with two players 20 yards apart and chip balls to each other. Don't
even worry about the receiving part at first; just try to play the ball to other player and that player
can catch the ball. Try to chip the ball so that every ball can be caught and then progress up to where
the receiver cannot move to get the ball.
To receive the ball, you simply want to get your body behind the ball and have the part of the body that is
going to make contact with the ball set perpendicular to the trajectory of the ball. Upon making contact
with the ball, the receiver should cushion the ball by pulling back and giving the ball as soft an area to
make contact with as possible.
The tactical part of chipping is also quite simple. Chip the ball any time you want to play the ball to a
teammate and there is an opponent in the path of the pass. By chipping the ball to this teammate, you can
bypass this opponent by chipping over her.
To practice both chipping and receiving, you can have the two players start 20 yards apart and put in the
requirement that in order to progress to 25 yards by making 8 consecutive passes that are received with the
body and played back 2 touch. Each successful series of 8 passes enable the players to go an additional 5
yards apart. If this is done with a team, have a competition to see which two players can progress to
45 yards (or a different distance depending upon the age and skill level of the players).
Really work on chipping and you will find the game of soccer becomes much easier. Give it a try.
