Indoor soccer (and futsal) are excellent arenas to improve your soccer skills very quickly.  To become an outstanding player, beside understanding how the game is played, you need to prepare yourself through proper training to execute your skills in the best possible manner.

Over the next few months, we will be posting articles about the basic techniques and skills needed to help players when they play indoor or outdoor soccer. The fundamental skills players use are dribbling, passing, receiving the ball, and shooting. 

1. Improving Your Dribbling Skills (Part One:  5 Ways to Improve your Individual Dribbling)
2. Improve your Dribbling Soccer Sense (Part Two:  Dribbling Games to Raise your Soccer IQ)
3. Why Small-Sided Games?

There are also hundreds of websites and videos to try to improve your skills. Coaches all around the world have hundreds of different soccer drills and sessions.  Evolve Soccer LA also offers skill classes to help improve these techniques. We will be sticking to the basics, just to give some players some ideas they can do by themselves or with a few  friends. We will also links to some of the other site that are helpful.  And show off your skills on Instagram:  #evolvesoccerskills

The 4 Pillars of a Successful Soccer Player

The best players in the world are not usually just born great. They spend thousands of hours improving themselves, not just in how they dribble or pass a ball but also how the take care of their body, mentally and physically. Although there are various names, and are broken up many different ways, to be an elite soccer athlete like a Ronaldo, Messi or an Alex Morgan, players must be strive to perfect the four pillars of soccer success:

1. Technical Ability
2. Tactical Awareness
3. Physical Attributes
4. Psychological Strength

US Youth Soccer has a more detailed explanation about these 4 pillars.

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Technique vs Skill

You may hear a coach say you need to improve your skills, while you may overhear another tell a player she has excellent technique. What is the difference. Isn’t it all about getting better.  Well, yes and no.

What is the difference between technique and skills?

Basically, technique is an action performed without the interference of opposition (unopposed), while skill is an action performed with the interference of opposition.  Technique is the ability to perform a physical task, such as short pass to another player, whereas skill is the ability to perform a task in a game setting., such as successfully completing that short pass to a moving teammate when an opponent is coming at you.  For young athletes to improve, they must have a desire to perfect the various soccer techniques. 

Opposed vs Unopposed Training

For decades, coaches and entire soccer federations have argued over the best training techniques to make their players the best in the world. Some think players should always have an opponent, and others believe individual technique needs to be enhanced by unopposed training to make sure the technique is correct. It is pretty clear that there is a middle ground, and almost all decent coaches would agree that if kids, especially  young kid,  are not having fun playing soccer, the success will not be achieved.

Long are the days when kids just go out and  play “in the streets”.  The speed and grit found in the fast-paced games in futsal and indoor soccer arenas, such as at Evolve,  that have popped up across the nation that has sparked a resurgence in street soccer that have helped develop superstars like Neymar, Mbappe, DeBruyne, Mane and Pogba.

“How to Improve your Soccer Skills” Series

If you want to learn how to improve your soccer skills,  follow our series over the next few months, and share with a friend.  

1. Improving Your Dribbling Skills (Part One:  5 Ways to Improve your Individual Dribbling)
2. Improve your Dribbling Soccer Sense (Part Two:  Dribbling Games to Raise your Soccer IQ)
3. Why Small-Sided Games?

Note that no player gets better without playing the game itself. Improving technique is one thing. Applying that technique in game situations is the real test.  All player should play as much as they can, take risks, make mistakes,  keep trying, and have fun!

Feel free leave any of your own ideas in the comments below.  Or take video of you or your friend and post on Instagram #evolvesoccerskills

Here is an example of an Evolve player working hard on improving his technique with the ball:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Evolve Soccer LA (@evolvesoccerla) on Sep 18, 2019 at 1:29pm PDT