Soccer iQ Volume 2 By Dan Blank Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved. I invite you to read my blog at www.soccerpoet.com and to follow me on Twitter: @SoccerPoet If you would like to place a bulk order of this book in paperback at a discounted price, please email me at [email protected]. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Meet Your Teammates 2 Plan B 3 Magic Numbers 4 The Fishhook Run 5 Play Behind the Fence 6 Skip a Layer 7 The Higher of Two Options 8 Play it to Where She’s Going, Not Where She’s At 9 To Jump or Not to Jump 10 No Blind Negative Passes 11 The Suicide Pass 12 Choose Your Battles 13 Aim Small, Miss Small 14 I Hate This Run and You Should Too 15 Hands Down Defending 16 Good Theater 17 Get Something 18 The Transition Throw-In 19 Something is Better than Nothing 20 Nobody’s Home 21 Swim Upstream 22 Cat and Mouse 23 The Goalkeeper’s Ball? 24 Five Will Save You Fifty 25 Be First to Your Clearances 26 Stealing Rest 27 Are You Trying to Kill Her? 28 When to Expend Some Energy 29 Sprint Early 30 When One Goes, We All Go! 31 Reward Your Teammate 32 Why Olympic Sprinters Don’t Dribble a Soccer Ball 33 When to Tackle Early 34 One More for the Goalkeepers 35 The Impossible Pass - Part 2 36 The Too-Shallow Cross 37 Pop the Ball 38 Middle-Third Free Kicks 39 Late Restarts 40 Who Goes in the Wall? 41 Setting Your Wall 42 Timing Your Checking Run 43 Start Offside and Get Stealthy 44 Stemming the Tide 45 The Inexcusable Offside 46 The Backpedaling Defender 47 Live to Play Another Day 48 Dry Boots, Happy Feet 49 A Few More Things About Recruiting A Final Word Other Books by Dan Blank ABOUT THE AUTHOR Introduction “What did I forget? What did I forget?” That tortured phrase echoed through my head as I deliberated whether or not to push the little button that would officially turn ‘Soccer iQ the Word document’ into Soccer iQ the book. My hand cupped the computer mouse as my index finger tickled the left-click trigger. I stared at the screen for ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty. This was a big step – huge really – and I didn’t want to get it wrong. It was my first book and I wanted to knock it out of the park! I had reached the proverbial point of no return and the one thing I desperately didn’t want was to take that leap only to realize a day later that I had left a really great concept out of the text. Man that would completely stink! Well, it didn’t take a day. Not even close. Fifteen minutes after Soccer iQ was on its way to the printed page, I realized that there was a wonderful chapter that had not occurred to me until it was too late. I jotted it down and labeled it as the first topic of a potential Volume 2. The chapter is called Plan B, and you’ll be reading it a few pages from now. With each passing week I’d think of another concept that should have been included in Soccer iQ until eventually I had compiled enough of those chapters to justify the release of Soccer iQ Volume 2. And here we are. If you’re reading this book, then you’ve probably also read Soccer iQ Volume 1. Thank you for that! Thank you for making it the best-selling soccer book on Amazon! I’m certain that in Mercer County, NJ, many a fine, high school English teacher dropped dead on the spot when they heard the news. I promised myself that I wouldn’t release a Volume 2 unless I cultivated enough quality content to truly justify its existence. I wasn’t going to throw together some rubbish and hope that the second volume would ride the coattails of the first just so I could make a buck. If I was going to put out a sequel, I would only do it with a clear conscience. The question I asked myself was this: If Volume 1 never existed, would this book be good enough to stand on its own? I believe it would. I hope you’ll agree. And if you don’t, I’ll at least hope that by the time you finish, you’ll feel that you’ve gotten more than your money’s worth. What I said in the introduction of Volume 1 still holds true: For this book to make a difference, you have to believe that the little things really do matter and that even one of them is enough to win or lose you a game. Welcome to more of your Soccer iQ… 1 Meet Your Teammates Did your whole team buy this book? If so, let me recommend that you all sit down and read this chapter together and then have a quick discussion about how it applies to your team. I guarantee that it will have an immediate and positive impact on your game day performances, and the whole thing shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes. Soccer passes are not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Your team is a collection of individuals. Each player brings to the table a different set of strengths and weaknesses. A simple inventory of those characteristics needs to be applied during the course of a match. It only makes sense that whenever possible, you put your teammates in the best possible situation to be successful. Probably… or at least hopefully, you already try to play to your own strengths; now let’s try doing that for your teammates also. You see Jennifer over there? Yeah, she’s great on the ball, but she’s no track star. As a matter of fact, she’s a little on the slow side. Let’s try to keep her out of footraces by playing the ball to her feet. She can do amazing things on the ball, but only if she can get to it. Ashley on the other hand, well, she can fly! We want her in footraces! If she wants the ball in behind the defense, put it out in front of her and let her run! Yes, Ashley is lightning fast, but she’s also pretty darn short and hasn’t won a header in three years. So let’s not play the ball to her head unless we have no choice. Becky however, she’s about two inches taller than any of their defenders and she’s an excellent header, so when we get into a crossing situation, let’s put it up in the air and let her go get it. But if you’re going to pass it to her on the ground, make sure you play it to her right foot because her left foot is horrible! And speaking of Becky and her left foot… if Becky is about to cross the ball from the left wing, we know that ball probably won’t reach the back post, so we’d better make sure we have at least one runner getting to the near post because that’s where the ball is going to land. Now our right back, Carli, she’s a fantastic 1v1 defender, but she doesn’t have the world’s strongest leg, so there’s no point in asking her to hit a 50-yard ball. As a matter of fact, since a lot of her clearances are rather short, our forwards need to drop deeper to help her out when she has to clear the ball. By now you’ve probably already started transposing the descriptions of my imaginary players onto your own teammates. Excellent! That’s exactly what you should be doing! If you’re in a fantastic position to score a goal, do you want the ball passed to your right foot or your left? You may be so good with either foot that you really don’t care, but I assure you, you are part of a very small minority. If you prefer one foot to the other, doesn’t it stand to reason that your teammates may feel the same way? Of course it does! These are the tiny considerations that smart players are constantly making. You know your teammates way better than I do. You’ve been with them for a while now. You can probably tell me which players are the fastest, the slowest and the best or worst headers. You can probably tell me who is right-footed and who is left-footed. Now, since you know all these things, why not apply that knowledge in the best possible way to give your teammates the best possible chance to be successful and give your team the best possible chance to win? Years ago I was the assistant coach for a W-League team. The roster was sprinkled with some exceptional Division I college players, but not everyone could make it to our first few training sessions. Going into our first game, some of our players still hadn’t even met yet. As we headed into the stadium, I overheard two of our forwards introducing themselves for the first time. The conversation went like this: “Hi Jen, I’m Nikki.” “Nice to meet you.” “Where do you want the ball? Do you want it to your feet or in space?” “I want it at my feet.”