Using the 80/20 principle, I narrowed the majority of ground ball control movements down to a solid foundation of five, V-Pull, Pull Behind, Sole Roll-Tap-Step, Turn Under and most important Outside-Inside. These must be mastered as they are the foundation for ball striking setup touches, ball protection skills, defender avoidance, and fast controlled dribbling.
Once a player is comfortable with the five its time to move on to Foundation COMBOS!
I think ball mastery repetitive drills, touches in a minute, X number of moves in 30 seconds etc. are definitely a way to improve. However to me, a recovering ADHD adult, they are boring and monotonous.
So I use combinations of 3 move chunks to increase a players Creativity and Dexterity with the ball
while at the same time avoiding the the boredom that can come with repetitive touch drills.
These combinations are moves that face the defender and either off-balance them or exploit them for over committing (diving in). We want to then get into the spaces on each side or behind them.
Protection Combos
All of these combos will at some point use your body as protection between the ball and the defender. However, we want to maintain movement in the process and smoothly flow into the next move or exploit the defenders pressure.
Separation Combinations
These combinations buy us space and/or time for our next action. We aren’t worried about beating the defender, but creating space for ourselves or opening our body shape to release the pressure with a pass.
