Mastering 1v1 skills and ball mastery in an in-game situation is guaranteed to make you the game-changer. However, practising 1v1 skills alone or with a teammate is completely different to using those skills in-game. 

To be able to use your 1v1 skills under pressure, you need to practice every day and build muscle memory. 

Practising ball mastery will build confidence, technical ability, control and co-ordination which you can take into your game. 

The trick is to start practising ball mastery in opposed situations, this means training in 1v1, 1v2, 2v2 situations. 

Master your technique and your skills using the MyPersonalFootballCoach app and then take them into training and game situations.

Here are some tips to help transfer skills from training to games: 

  • Practice until you can’t get it wrong – the more your practice the more the movement will become muscle memory. If a skill is hard to do, you need to keep practising it every day, not until you get it right, until you get it wrong. 
  • Practice with opposition or teammate – this is really important to build your ball mastery skills under pressure in 1v1 and 1v2 situations. Some of the best players in the world can dribble past 4 players without losing the ball.
  • Develop your decision making – Once you have mastered your ball mastery and 1v1 skills, this means you can keep your head up and analyse your surroundings while being on the ball. You need to be able to understand the same from a tactical point of view and know what your next steps are. 

The players who are the game changers are the ones who take the risks, put in maximum effort and most importantly learn from their mistakes. 

Linking ball mastery to the game is going to take time, resilience and commitment. But this is what makes the game-changers. 

You’re going to make mistakes but that’s fine, that’s part of the journey!

What skills should you be practising? What’s going to help you. Stand out?

The players who stand out are the game-changers. So practice your 1v1 skills and master all of the ones on the MyPersonalFootballCoach app on the 1v1 skill library…these are the skills used by the best players in world soccer.

Then practice your end product:

  • Passing
  • Crossing
  • Shooting and Finishing

This combined with your ability to stay on the ball and dominate your opponent will help you stand out from the crowd! 

Check out how some of the best players in the world use ball mastery to unbalance and evade their opposition.

Master the Ball… Master the Game