There are four basic touches you can make to the ball to move it in the direction you want. You can use the inside of the foot, the outside of the foot, the sole (or bottom) of the foot and the laces (top of the foot). The trick to keeping full control of the ball is to keep the ball close to you at all times. For this reason, any time you touch the ball with your foot, you should not kick it further than a couple of steps away from you unless making a pass, this way you can change direction (turn) or shield the ball easily.
In the first video you see a coach showing you the basics of dribbling a football.
First just moving with the ball, then dribbling using the inside of the feet, then the outside of the foot and finally using the sole.
He doesn’t show you using the laces, but watch the pro’s and you’ll spot it. It’s usually saved for when you’re going fast.
Dribbling you can practice by yourself. You should try to use both feet.
If you spend 5 minutes dribbling with your favourite foot, consider dribbling 10 minutes with your least favourite foot.
Below you will find a list of some world famous goals of players dribbling with the ball past players, to score some of the finest (individual) goals ever scored. Watch them and then vote for your favourite.
As they move, see which part of the foot they use and watch how they change their speed and direction.
World famous dribbled goals :
John Barnes for England against Brazil
Adriano for Inter Milan against Udinese
Roberto Baggio “plays a one-two” then dribbles to goal.
Diego Maradona dribbles from his own half to score.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic takes on half a team to score
George Weah runs “box to box” to score
Ryan Giggs takes route one to goal
George Best dances through some defenders
Saeed Al-Owairan for Saudi v Belgium
In many of the videos of the pros you can see the players changing direction to beat players. We will talk and give more examples of this in our TURNING section. But you might also notice them feigning.
Feigning is when you give the impression that you are going to go one way and then go the other. The “step-over” is a good example of this:
The most basic way to feign is to sway your upper body or move your hips as if you are going to change direction, often referred to as “The Mathews“. Have a look at the Ryan Giggs goal against Arsenal (above). The ball hardly changes direction, but the defenders think it will.
To the right is a compilation of some great dribbling moves, it includes lots of other techniques as well, see what you can learn from it.
Here are a few other moves you can practice doing:
These are all techniques you can practice on your own. Once you are confident of a few of these then you could try and put the all together one after the other.
