Having read up quite a bit on defence in football, you will now encounter the other side with attacking play. You’ll learn how to create space, evading tight marking by the defenders, and proceed to score goals. Practise is key when it comes to honing your skills as an attacker in football. We’ll now look at a couple of drills that can be used to improve your technique and preparedness on the field to take split-second decisions.

We begin with a 1v1 attacking exercise. The attacker has to put on a burst of speed and use his skills (feinting) to beat the defender, and then score past the keeper. Feinting is where you pretend to turn or go in one direction, but quickly change track, confusing the defender and not giving him time to adjust position in order to block or counter your move. If you run slowly with the ball, there’s very little chance of being able to get past the defender. The important lesson – be quick and dynamic on your feet.

But what happens when the defender is right behind you? How do you manoeuvre, how do you create space? As an attacker, you face the ball and receive a pass. Turn quickly and accelerate before the defender can catch up, thereby creating the space to shoot at goal. This is easier said than done, but with consistent practice, you can train your reflexes to be lightning fast in the field.

To increase the complexity of this exercise, repeat it but with the defender tight marking the attacker, not leaving any room to turn. Now comes your chance to be creative and use the skills you’ve picked up so far, combined with speed, to outwit the defender and create goal-scoring opportunities for yourself and your team.

Attacking play is in essence a combination of footwork, speed, acceleration, and other tactics to beat the defender. Regular practice is the only way to get better at this and even professional players train regularly to keep this aspect of their skills sharpened all the time.

In the next post, we continue with attacking play, moving on to describe how you can take the support and help of a teammate/partner in combination play and overlap. You could think of this as unlocking the next level of attacking play or part 2 in your training for the same. Keep reading and improving your technique steadily.