1v1 Technical Skill
I was 16 years old before I truly understood how to move past a defender at speed during a 1v1. I joined a team called the Chicago Magic. At the time, the Magic were ranked number 1 in the nation having just won the Super Y League National Championship.
I played against this team my entire life and knew how good they were. My prior team would always have close games with them, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. And now I was moving onto this team full of future Division I players. It was quite an awakening.
The thing that stuck out to me the most about the players on this team was how good they were in 1v1 situations. They would constantly fly at the opposition at full speed, sometimes beating their first defender, then second, then third. The way in which they did this was not left up to chance but trained into each one of them.
I specifically remember the 1v1 drill we did in practice. The defender passed the ball to the attacker and the attacker dribbled as fast as he could at the the defender, making a fast and efficient move and scooting the ball past him. This was constant. And when the attacker didn’t move fast enough, the coach stopped the play and a new set of two would come onto the field. Simple and effective. As an attacker, no one ever wanted the coach to stop the play.
Most of my teammates had years of practicing this. Their offensive and defensive technical skills were way above the rest of their age group. This sense of technical skill transferred over to the keep away and positional play sessions we had later in the practice. All of this was practiced at high intensity and was a constant test to keep a starting position or even on the first team of 18 players, as there was an A and a B team.
This made games easier than practice. All in all I ended up moving away from this team after a year. The drive was very far away and commitment was 6 days a week. However, I’m grateful I had this experience. What I gained in that year was a new soccer identity, one in which pushed me to new limits I didn’t know I was capable of. I learned a new universal law of soccer, which can be stated as this: In the exploitation of space, an object in motion towards a given space is much faster than a resting object trying to keep the object in motion away from that space.
In other words, if I receive the ball and my intention is to take the defender 1v1 and exploit the space behind them, I will dribble as fast as I can at him. He is not sprinting as fast as he can and is trying to cut off my angle into space. However, there reaches a critical point before I get close to him. This varies depending on defenders, but in general I’d say it’s five yards. At five yards, I quickly change my direction and burst into space. A good defender requires a fake before this quick change of direction.
It’s very difficult to defend the player that can achieve this type of dribbling skill. It’s not a matter of being faster than everyone else. It’s a matter of being confident with the ball and spending a lot of time practicing this principle against opposition and visualizing it at home when you can only practice by yourself. I wasn’t a speedy kid at this age. In fact, I was way behind my age group physically, being one of the youngest, shortest, and skinniest.
The attacker can reach top speed within a matter of strides. The defender can as well. But, how long does it take for the defender to go from cutting off the attacker to recovering back to tackle the attacker? A few strides, or a couple to a few seconds. And in that time frame, the attacker has already exploited the space he decided on earlier, passed, dribbled another defender or two, and/or had a shot.
Don’t lose hope as a defender. The more you practice this with your teammates, the better you will get at defending these dribbling Messis!
The key here is to have patience, give the good dribbler some space, force them toward your teammate or the sideline, feint or fake (yes, you fake as a defender, too!), and tackle when they mis-dribble or come too close to you. This doesn’t have to be a hard tackle. I’d rather have you poke it toward your teammate like Finn did to Matias this past weekend (visit the video link here).
This week we will work on rondos, 1v1’s, and positional play games.
Technical practice for players - 5-10 minutes a day
Around the Cone - 2 minutes
Double L - 2 minutes
Toe Touches (Spinning) - 2 minutes
Enjoy your day and see you tonight!
Michael Dardanes
Fortress Football Club