One of the greatest movements in soccer is watching a sweeping attacking move, or a fluid interchange in the midfield, that ends up at the feet of a crosser who plays a tantalizing ball that is finished for a goal. Ka-ching! Thank you very much.

Of course it takes time to become an important piece of the well oiled engine, called the attack, that produces such stunning goals; however, it is never too early to bring the technique of crossing into young minds and bodies of the game.

It is a very difficult task to go from running (usually at full speed) straight down the field, on the outside, to turning and passing in front of goal. It takes years of practice for many and many repetitions in each practice to be automatic when you cross. The repetition builds, and the ability to be automatic when you cross is called muscle memory. Remember it! You will hear that word again, in these newsletters and on the field.

If you are just beginning crossing, your first tip is to take a good preparation touch before that final ball in. Instead of just touching the ball straight down the field and then turning your leg and body sideways to hit the ball across, touch the ball in toward the goal just a bit. This will make it easy for you to push the ball across the mouth of the goal. Your body will not have to turn so dramatically.

Half the work of turning is almost done. Now, you can focus on making sure that ball makes it to its target, which should have destination: “back of the net” in his sights.

If you have that little tip down, time to throw a monkey wrench in your works. Who is the Monkey Wrench? A defender trying to stop you. Yes, as if crossing wasn’t difficult enough, people are trying to mess you up at the same time. So make sure you burn them early, so you have a little space to make that angled touch.

Now burning these defenders are not the topic of this article, and I think working on your crossing approach is enough for this month. So next month, we will continue with the crossing theme in Crossing Part 2 - Devilishly Accurate.

If you would like some tips on burning defenders, or want to finish learning about the skill of crosses today, go to Virtual Soccer Trainer and 6 Minute Soccer Skills, so you can speed up the return on the success of your crosses.

Give yourself or your players the audio/visual opportunity to view the techniques and hear the topics explanations to give them a better understanding of what it takes to deliver goal studded crosses.

Click here to view and hear the drills and drill topics of Crossing!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Soccer World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.