What do I work on?

How do I improve?

What's most important?

And that's why today, we'll show you five skills.

Five skills that we think are the most important for any beginning player.

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Beating the goalkeeper.

Beating the goalkeeper is something many new players struggle with.

If you're a beginning player who wants to score, the first thing you should work on is shooting away from the goalkeeper, into the corners of the goal.

And when you're just getting started, the best way to do that is to use the inside of your foot to shoot.

Also, when you're facing a goalkeeper in a 1v1, ideally you want to shoot before you get too close to the goalkeeper.

When you get really close to a goalkeeper, shooting to the corner is more difficult because the keeper will block most of that angle.

But when you shoot from a little further away, suddenly your angle is much larger and you have more space to pass the ball into the corner.

Basic Passing and Receiving.

Probably the most important skill for any beginning player is the ability to receive a pass.

Control it with the inside of the foot and pass it accurately to another teammate.

It may seem basic, but if you constantly miss control passes or play inaccurate passes, nobody will want to give you the ball.

If you want to improve your basic passing and receiving, use a friend or a wall and practice passing the ball with the inside of your foot while your plant foot is pointed toward your target.

Then, when you receive a pass, use the inside of your foot to control the ball just in front of you.

This will make it easier to pass the ball again because you'll have space to swing your foot through the ball.

Controlling More Difficult Balls.

In any game, there are going to be times when you receive a ball that's more difficult to control than your standard along the ground pass.

It might be a pass that's slightly off to the side of you.

It might be a pass in the air.

It might be a ball that's bouncing.

The point is, most balls are not going to be perfect, so you need to be able to adjust your feet quickly and control different types of passes.

If you can't control balls that are just slightly more challenging, then your teammates will just avoid passing to you.

To improve your control, have a friend throw you balls at various heights, angles, and speeds.

Keep your feet moving and try to get the ball on the ground and under control as fast as possible.

You can also do the same thing with a wall.

Taking the ball with you.

Of course, sometimes the best choice isn't a pass.

Sometimes you have open space and you should dribble into it.

When you're first starting football, you don't have to be messy.

You don't have to dribble multiple players.

But every player should have some basic dribbling ability and should be able to take the ball with them in open space.

Without this skill, you're likely to take touches that are too long or to trip over the ball.

To practice your dribbling, use the top outside edge of your foot and run with the ball in an open field, trying to keep the ball close to you the whole time.

You can also check out our dribbling training video for some exercises.

Protecting the ball.

If you've ever played football, you know there are some situations where you don't have open space or someone to pass the ball to.

And in these situations, you need to learn how to protect the ball, at least for a few seconds.

Now, there are many ways great players protect the ball.

But for beginners, we recommend you start with the basic skill of using the underside of your foot to pull the ball back and away from defenders.

If you're able to master even just this one thing, it's going to help you immensely on the field.

If you want to practice pulling the ball away, you can check out the Puskas footwork exercise from one of our footwork videos.

All right, everybody, we hope you liked that video.

If you did, make sure to leave a like, make sure to subscribe, and make sure to check out our other videos if you want to learn more about football.