When I’m playing soccer its more than just getting the ball to the goal because so much more goes into this sport. Unlike a lot of sports, you cannot touch a soccer ball with your hands or arms, unless you’re the goalie. Due to this limitation, you have to develop better technique with your legs. This can be challenging because we usually don’t use our legs for anything except running and walking, but when playing soccer you must run while controlling the ball and also dodging the other team from stealing the ball.
The most important technique is trapping the ball, trapping can be done with your head, leg, foot, chest, basically everything except your hands and arms. It can be challenging to determine what body part to use to trap the ball, unless its on the ground of course, but when the ball is in the air even if it touches your shoulder it can be considered a handball so its important to watch where the ball is going and make a decision of what to do within the 3 secs it takes for the ball to get to you. It takes a lot of practices and confidence to learn how to trap the hardest part is getting over the fear of the ball hitting you, once you get past this fear it is easier to get the instant comprehension of what to do in the moment when a ball is flying at high speeds towards you.
Soccer is a very mental sport, so much goes into the sport from a first person perspective. When learning how to play soccer it can be very intimidating trying to learn how to control the ball. Due to the difficulty of learning how to move your feet to control the ball it can be a very mentally draining sport, unless you use the mistakes you make as motivation to get better. The most important thing in soccer or any sport, is continuing to push yourself no matter what others say or the mistakes you make never give up, practice makes excellence.
The Harrison Pawprint 