Soccer Juggling Skills is one of the most entertaining skills in football, but ironically, a player rarely gets a chance to juggle, or have the reason to do so, during the match. A basic rule of football says that if you want your team to keep possession as long as possible, and today's game is based on prolonged possession, the ball should stay on the ground as long as possible. Obviously, while juggling, you should lift it off the ground, so the skill itself is not very useful in itself.
That's why many coaches tend to dismiss or overlook it in training sessions, thinking they prefer to train players for something that has practical use in a match. And that's what I think is one of the biggest mistakes in training, especially in youth training: ignoring football juggling training.
To back up my claims, I'll show you exactly why it's so important to juggle football and also tell you how to juggle properly and a couple of ways to train it individually, with a teammate or as a group.
Football juggling: why is it important?
You won't find yourself juggling in almost no situation on the field (unless maybe if you want to humiliate your opponents or the like), but that doesn't mean football juggling shouldn't be trained. In fact, it's one of the skills that are among the easiest to train and not only that, but you'll also see the results very quickly.
Juggling affects a variety of peripheral abilities and, most importantly, it's fun! Learning and developing as a football player with exercises that are difficult or boring is not the best way to do it, but if you can train and have fun at the same time, that's a proven golden recipe. Here are some of the skills that are most visibly improved with the help of juggling:
Ball control: probably the skill that improves most with juggling is ball control. Doing constant juggling exercises, you'll learn exactly how hard to tilt the ball with your foot to stay within your range, which is basically what ball control is all about.
By juggling, you also get what I like to call "confidence in the feet" and you'll soon learn to control the ball without having to focus on catching it. This is extremely important as it allows you to control the ball naturally, allowing you to use those additional 2 seconds you would need to concentrate on to receive the ball, to find a player to pass it on.
Agility: While juggling, you'll need to make quick adjustments to your body to keep the ball in the air. In the long run, this improves your agility and you'll be able to get control of the ball faster in a match, in situations where lightning reflexes are needed. It also helps you make faster steering changes, which is great to have when dribbling the ball beyond an opponent.
Once you have good control of all these sub-exercises to juggle, simply play with the ball and juggle any part of your body that is comfortable for you. If you're at this stage of juggling, where you can apparently juggle forever and not drop the ball, you've already greatly improved your other skills, so those hours of practice will eventually be worth it. But getting here is the hard part ...
Football Juggling - Exercises
I covered how to juggle individually in the previous section, so if you're willing to spend extra time outside of training hours to improve yourself and your football juggling skills on your own, you should follow that routine. However, as a coach, you'll want your players to work in juggling during practice sessions and it's better if you combine allowing them to juggle individually, working in pairs and/or groups.
In order for them to practice their football juggling skills in pairs, you must try manually choosing the couples taking into account the height and skill of juggling. You'll want players with nearby heights to work together and not face someone who is a higher foot against a smaller teammate because it could interrupt the exercise. You'll also want players with nearby juggling skills to work together, combining less skilled players so they can work on their juggling skills without hindering another player's exercise.
Think about what would happen if a less skilled juggler was paired with a highly qualified one... obviously, the highly qualified would hardly improve his own juggling technique, as he would constantly have to wait for the less qualified teammate to catch up.
Couple exercise is simple. Players will have to pass the ball to each other in the air, and will be allowed a maximum of three touches of the ball. Encourage them to pass the ball with different parts of the foot, thighs and head, so that they gain control of the ball with all these areas.
It can also give it more flavor by offering small rewards and "punishments", for example, the couple who manages to keep the ball in the air longer, receive some kind of reward, or every time a player drops the ball to the ground, he should do 10-20 push-ups, then continue with the exercise.
Also work on your players' juggling skills in larger groups than a couple. It can accommodate the exercise of the windmill up to the juggling training to some extent. In a windmill exercise, 4-6 players sit in line, with another 4-6 in front of them. The first player in row A passes the ball to the first player in row B, then moves quickly to the end of the row. The receiving player in row B passes the ball to the next player in row A and moves to the back of his own row, and so on.
It's a very dynamic exercise that involves several of your players at the same time, so if you want to accommodate it to juggle, tell your players to pass the ball in the air instead of on the ground, with a minimum of two taps and a maximum of three. This will not only improve your players' juggling skills, but will also simulate how you would use your juggling skills in a real match scenario, where the ball comes in the air from a teammate or opponent, unlike when you're juggling individually and the ball comes upright.
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