FineSoccer Kids 48

Welcome to the FineSoccer Kids Newsletter.  Today’s subject deals with scoring on breakaways.

A breakaway is when an attacker gets past the last defender (not counting the keeper) and has what appears to be an easy scoring opportunity.  The reason I write “what appears to be” is that since players don’t practice this situation very often, they seem to get stuck with a great opportunity but don’t know the best way to score from this situation.

The first thing you want to do when you get into a breakaway opportunity is to make sure that a defender doesn’t catch you.  Doing two things can do this.  First, if you only have a step on the defender, you want to cut her off so that she is running directly behind you instead of to the side of you.  This will make it more difficult for her to catch you and get to the ball since you have your body between the opponent and the ball (this is not obstruction because you are within playing distance of the ball).  The other thing you want to do is push the ball far out in front of you to go faster (you can run faster without the ball than you can with the ball so get the ball out from under your feet as much as possible).

Once you have created space between you and the defenders, the next thing is to take a direct path towards the penalty spot (this is assuming you are coming from somewhere around midfield).  Too many players dribble right at the near post and by doing this they limit the angle they will have to shoot at the goal.  By going toward the penalty spot, it brings you to the middle of the goal, which increases the angle to score.

When you get near the keeper (and if the keeper is smart she will be coming off her line to cut down your angle) simply pass the ball past her with either the inside or outside of your foot into the back corner of the goal.  Too many players try to hit a hard shot to score on breakaways and the problem in doing this is that they lose accuracy, and also by taking this big “windup” for the hard shot, they give the keeper time to react.  Just pass the ball into the back of the goal and you will significantly increase your probability of scoring.  It might not seem like the “spectacular” way to score, but in my opinion any goal is a beautiful goal.

Any questions, comments or suggestions should be sent to kidscomments@finesoccer.com or they can be posted to the FineSoccer Forum at http://finesoccer.net

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Have a great day!

Lawrence