Soccer Skills for Youth Players

By improving your soccer skills, you have the potential to be a better player, although there is more to a soccer player than being able do do tricks and juggle a soccer ball.

Drills and exercises that are designed to improve players skill level provide players with a great foundation for improvement.

Soccer Skills Needed

The fundamental requirement for a good or great soccer player is to have a goodtechnical ability and to have great skill and confidence. The basic skills thatare required for soccer player are:

Ball Control
Dribbling
Passing
Shooting
Heading
Defending
Goalkeeping

To develop good soccer skills a great deal of practice and commiment is required. The key todeveloping great soccer skills is repetition. These free soccer drills will give you a great start to learning how to play soccer.

Ball Control

Getting the ball under control so that you can pass, shoot or dribble meanshaving a kitbag of techniques to get the ball where you want it for your nextmove.
What techniques do you need to get the ball under control?

Dribbling

Nothing is quite as exciting like seeing a forward dribbling the ball pastdefenders to create a scoring chance.

What is the best technique for dribbling?
What is the difference between dribbling and running with the ball?
How can I learn to dribble past a defender?

Passing

Getting the ball out of defence and into attack requires quite a bit ofteamwork, but also players must be able to pass the ball using a variety oftechniques, depending on who they are passing to and where that player is.

Shooting

Soccer is all about scoring more goals than the opposition, and that meanscreating opporunities to score and the shooting.

Where is the best place to shoot from?
Where is the best place to aim?

Heading

Heading is often neglected in coaching soccer, but is a much needed skill, forboth attacking and defending, but:
What are the difference techniques between attacking and defensive headers?

Defending

The defenders main roles are to deny the opposition scoring chances whichinvolves great team work and individual skill like tackling and delaying theopposition.

Goalkeeping

Goalkeepers are a rare breed, requiring great courage and skill. Jeff Benjaminssite contains all the information that you need to become a great goalkeepe

Better First Touch in 12 Minutes?

This exercise can be done as a warm up for practice and games. I have used this warm up for a number of years for players aged 6+ with fantastic results.
It only takes 12 minutes and I encourage my players to do this at home 3 times a week to ensure they get the most out of it.

This drill works, so get great soccer skills in 12 minutes a day here

Ball Mastery

Mastering the ball and feeling comfortable with the ball at your feet is probably the most essential ingredient of being a good soccer player. Luckily there is a proven technique, that I have used with great success that will get your players to master the ball.

Juggling a soccer ball

All the great players of the world are also great ball jugglers. Learning to juggle a soccer ball will improve your touch on the ball, give you more confidence when receiving the ball.
Juggling a soccer ball is a pastime that players can do by themselves, all you need is a ball!
Good ball jugglers tend to have agreat first touch and finesse with the ball, so encourage you players to learn how to juggle a soccer ball.

Dribbling a soccer ball

Dribbling in soccer is a very important soccer skill to learn and practice.
One common mistake made when dribbling is to keep your eyes focussed on the ball, and not being aware of what is going on around you.
This is the #1 drill for teaching young players how to dribble a soccer ball.

Dribbling a soccer ball is a bit of an art, in fact Brazilians dribble like they dance. How do they move with such elegance and grace?
Here are a couple of "secrets" to get your players to dribble with grace!