|
|
|
|
|
Soccer Edition 93 Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today's newsletter deals with the difference between trapping a ball and receiving a ball. There is a new survey online and if you haven't had a chance to participate, please take a moment to take the new survey as well as check out the results from the previous ones. Simply go to www.finesoccer.com/survey.htm to participate. While some people might consider the difference between trapping a ball and receiving a ball to be simply semantics, I see them as two different terms. When I hear people say they want to learn how to trap the ball, I believe what they are really asking for is how do you stop the ball from moving, right at the feet. There are a number of ways to teach this depending upon how the ball arrives at the player. If the ball is played directly to a player's foot, she can use the bottom of her foot to stop the ball (simply by keeping the heel of the foot almost on the ground and pointing the toes up at a 45 degree angle to make contact with the ball). By using this technique you "trap" the ball between your foot and the ground. Another technique is to receive the ball with the inside of the foot and to pull the foot back upon contact to cushion the ball and to make it stop moving. It's actually almost the exact opposite technique that is used than if you were passing the ball with the inside of the foot. You can also use the outside of the foot as well as the top of the foot for trapping. The difference between trapping the ball with the foot and receiving the ball with the foot is that when trapping a ball, the ball comes to a complete stop. When receiving the ball properly, the ball will almost always keep moving in a different direction to avoid oncoming players to or change the point of attack. In most cases during a soccer game, when the ball is coming to a player, there is also an opposing player pressuring the ball. If the player traps the ball dead, the oncoming player has the opportunity to challenge her for the ball and this puts the attacking player at risk of either losing possession of the ball or possibly having unnecessary contact that results in an injury. If in this same situation the player receives the ball by playing the ball softly to herself away from where the oncoming player is coming, it greatly increases the probability of the player maintaining possession of the ball and also greatly decreases the probability of the player getting injured. The way to receive the ball away from pressure is to first know where the
pressure is coming from. This requires the player having her head up and knowing
where all of the players are around her. Next, once she knows where the pressure
is coming from she must decide where she wants to take the ball. If the pressure
is coming from the players left side, she will most likely decide to receive the
ball towards her right side to go away from pressure and give her more time and
space to work in. In order to do this, the player must turn her hips while
initially making contact with the ball so that they end up facing the direction
that she wants to go (this is true whether she is using the inside or outside of
her foot). Once she cushions the ball in the same way that she does while
trapping, she then pushes the ball in the direction she wants to go so that the
ball never comes to a complete stop. By receiving the ball in this manner, she will be able to have more time, more space and more vision of what to do with the ball next. In other words, once players start working on receiving the balls as opposed to just trapping the balls, they will become better players. Once the players have the technique of receiving down, the easiest way I know to practice it is simply to scrimmage where the one rule is that any time the ball is killed (meaning anytime the ball stops moving completely because of a trap) it's an immediate loss of possession. In the beginning of doing this, you will see a lot of losses of possession because of this rule but the players will quickly get the hang of it and once they do, it becomes a wonderful habit to develop Any questions, comments or suggestions should be sent to comments@finesoccer.com or posted to the FineSoccer Forum at www.finesoccer.com/forum.htmkids@finesoccer.com Remember that all previous newsletters are archived at http://finesoccer.com Have a great day! Lawrence |
|
|
