Command The Match By Mastering Football Control
September 7, 2008
On the ball who’s in control? When you juggle do you find yourself directing the movement of the ball or are you reacting to the change in its direction. Masters of ball control demonstrate mastery by controlling the pace of games because these players are frequently touching and guiding play or game speed.
What ball control looks like?
Ball Control is your technical ability to hold, secure, distribute and attack with the ball. Players with exquisite ball control make the game beautiful. Sound ball control is almost artistic but can also be very simplistic. Players with good ball management skills are able to control the flow of the game. With control you are able to create opportunities and diffuse pressure.
Two of the most well know ball control masters are Pele and Maradonna. These ball control idols told the ball what to do, the ball listened. As a player you must master the ability to command control of the ball and not the other way around. Think of the way that you write with a pen or pencil, hopefully you have good penmanship? If not, the point is that you drive the direction of your pen/pencil and you produce the end result pretty or not. How much do you practice this skill? Pretty much every day, right?
Becoming Master Of The Ball
Mastering ball control takes a lot of effort and consistent practice at varying levels of speed, change of direction and with many control touch points i.e. feet, head, chest, thigh, etc. How much time do you spend juggling daily? How much time do you spend practicing new moves dribbling? How much do you practice explosive directional changes? How much time to you spend taking people on 1 v 1?
You need to touch the ball every day if you’re serious about mastering control over it. Experiment with new dribbling moves, cuts and taking the ball out of the air from a friend’s service. There are many ways to master ball control and its really up to your imagination as to how you develop the skill but below are a few ideas to consider.
Ideas For Action:
1. Play lots of 1 v 1 with a friend in a confined space.
2. Practice dribbling and cutting with the ball in an open space. Focus on performing a cut and exploding out of it.
3. Have a friend serve you balls from a distance that you take out of the air and put into play on the ground quickly.
4. Organize small sided games like 2 v 2, 3 v 3 and 4 v 4 and play as much as you can.
5. Grab a small size ball and just juggle to your hearts content.
As part of FFC’s series on, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” we are discussing each key element in 24 successive blog posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday over an 8 week period inside the respective Game, Body and Mind sections. For more information about the 24 Key Elements get our Players Assessment Kit here. Be sure to also subscribe to FFC by email or RSS - just visit the subscribe button in the top right corner of the page.
What ideas, input, experiences or resources can you share?
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