How to become a better football striker!

To start to become a better football striker, you must have the right attitude.

What is the right football attitude for a striker?

A player’s road to success begins with their attitude. The attitude towards the coach, fellow teammates, training sessions, as well as composure on the field, are some of the attitude characteristics that make a great striker. Consider the following points and think about how your attitude in these areas could improve:

• Positive attitude to winning yet maintaining a positive and supportive attitude towards teammates even after a loss.
• Being respectful to the opposition, whether it’s players, team managers or coaches.
• Supportive and helpful attitude, a nice person to be around, with a bit of humour but not over the top.
• Humility. Football is a team game; you must understand there are more players in the team than just you.

• Be open to criticism and learn from it – don’t take it as a negative, see it as an opportunity to improve, this mental approach will protect your self confidence.
• Be tough. Don’t turn away from tackles and make sure you are not a player that gets injured excessively – coaches don’t like that type of player!

• Show your presence on the field. This is not an excuse for unwarranted aggression. This is pivotal in a player’s attitude. Presence and aggression are very different if you are getting a lot of yellow cards you are being too aggressive.
• All strikers need a bit of arrogance. They believe in themselves. They believe that they can and will score nearly every game. This is not to contradict humility; these elements can coexist. As a striker, arrogance must remain an internal motivator and confidence booster, don’t let it become a negative of your game. The balance is fine, which is why this is an important point.
• Sportsmanship is important, it will drive how you play – fair but solid. A sportsmanlike attitude will help control excessive aggression.

How can you improve your attitude as a soccer striker?

Firstly, mental toughness and self-talk are arguably the most important traits. See the article on mental toughness.

As a striker, YOU must control your self-talk. Do not allow your self-talk to be destructive or critical – it must always be positive or at least neutral – i.e. “I will get it next time.”

Another point is visualisation - how to prepare for peak performance, which I discuss in detail later.

Overall, friendly and caring towards others, this attitude is a “must-have” skill. For further reading: “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie or for a quick summary see this blog article. 

Purposeful Practice

We have all heard the old saying that 10,000 hours of practice is required to make you an expert, which to an extent is true. However, it is what you do within those 10,000 hours that really makes the difference, as practice without purpose is almost a waste of time.

A perfect example of this is Tim Cahill, who, as a youngster, was told he was too short to make it as a football player. Now retiring at the age of 39 and looking back at his career, some of the goals Tim scored with his head were outstanding. Why? Because Tim had a purpose behind his training. In his autobiography “Tim Cahill Legacy”, Tim states “With the Marrickville Red Devils, my vision, technique and ability to head the ball made me a stand out, despite being a year younger than anyone else in the squad. And the more I scored with my head, the more I would train and train at heading. Some weeks, I spent hours just trying to perfect the angling and generate more power with my contact”. This was purposeful practice.

Without any doubt, a football striker MUST practice but not just any practice, it must be purposeful and deliberate. Absolutely nothing can replace practice. Practice makes perfect – not quite, but deliberate practice makes a substance in the brain called Myelin. Developing Myelin means that you can execute the move far better so we say "Practice makes Myelin and Myelin makes permanent. For more on this topic see our blog 6-reasons-why-strikers-needs-specialist-training - point 6.

So how does a striker practice?

For football skill development, start small – work on one thing. Go very slow to get the technique right. Then increase speed, and keep pushing yourself to get faster and faster, but it must still be executed perfectly.  

Set yourself goals. Aim for 20 in a row, done perfectly at maximum speed – when you can get to that level, you have a skill that is permanent. If you only get to 15, then start again from one. This will help build mental toughness while practicing with purpose. Watch your self-talk – do not bash yourself up. “I am working towards being better” - must be your mantra.

Touch

The importance of touch to a striker cannot be emphasised enough. Touch is a critical skill especially when a striker finds themselves in a tight situation with all odds against them. It is in these situations that a striker’s skill in touch is the difference in a successful attack or its downfall.

In developing touch, there are many parts of the body that a striker can utilise to their advantage. However, as explained above, this does not happen overnight, it comes from lots of purposeful practice.

From simply using different angles on your feet, to first time volleys, shoulders, thigh or even your back (check out 1.34 to 1.43 sec), Ronaldo uses his back! 

The limit is your imagination and the more creative the touch, the high chances of beating that unsuspecting defender!

So how do you develop football touch?

You guessed it – practice. We recommend a 20-minute twice weekly session (as a minimum) just on touch. Ideally, you would work with a friend or parent feeding you a ball, however, a brick wall can do but it will require more dedication. Receive and return the ball about 10 times on each foot – alternating between feet. You must not remain static, moving off the ball is integral to developing a good touch. Use the inside of the foot, laces, outside of the foot, thigh, chest, shoulder and head.

Juggling is also a great way to develop touch, but again you must involve movement. Mark out 6 cones and place them 5 metres apart from each other in a straight line. Now see if you can juggle along next to the cones, when you get to the 30-metre mark, kick the ball over your head, turn around and head back to the starting line while still juggling. Once you achieve 60 metres, increase the speed to a jogging pace. Try this activity with the left foot only, then the right foot only, and finally with both feet. Add in your thighs, shoulders and head if you can, but the point of the drill is to improve the touch with your feet, so use the others only if you need to.  Use our Golden Boot Striker Academy records as the benchmark to beat:

• Right Foot – 150m – Pat Rosato
• Left Foot – 130m – Eli Salisbury
• Both Feet Combined – 290m – Eli Salisbury

Another simple, yet effective, drill is what we call the “soft foot” technique. Soft Foot is when a player receives the ball from a high kick, and by using a soft foot, controls the ball to stop directly at their feet without the ball rolling away from them. The trick is to make the foot very loose and relax the angle so the foot is limp. Throw the ball high into the air, and while the foot is limp, receive the ball so it nearly stays on your foot. If the ball bounces away from your foot, your ankle is still locked.  Practice using both feet.

Shooting accuracy

For shooting accuracy. Set up a target – bottom left-hand corner of a goal. Start in front of the target area and back 5 metres from the target – 5 shots left foot, 5 shots right foot. Score yourself. Then move 2 metres to the right start again, 2 metres to the left. The move back another 5 metres – same process.

Your practice schedule should look something like this table

I did say a striker needs to practice!

Your score will give you a guide to areas that need to be improved. The above is a basic start. After you have got to the stage where you are consistently scoring 4 and 5 on both feet you can add a move or skill before shooting.

Visualisation

Visualisation is a very powerful tool to help you become a better striker. Visualisation taps into the mental side of being a striker. It is a mental rehearsal of your playing at peak performance. I have visualisation effectively many times and strongly recommend it as part of any plan to become a better soccer striker.

“I lie in bed the night before the game and visualise myself scoring goals or doing well,” Wayne Rooney once revealed. “You're trying to put yourself in that moment and trying to prepare yourself, to have a 'memory' before the game. I don't know if you'd call it visualising or dreaming, but I've always done it, my whole life.”

For more background see this great article “The power of positive visualisation” by Roy Skillen.

Then review this five-step process on how to do visualisation by Matt Neason.

Game preparation

Gameday is full of nerves, excitement and anticipation. It is very important to get your body and mind in the right place for the start of the game. Consistency in high-quality performance requires consistency in a high-quality approach. Approach each game in the same manner (as if it is a grand final). Prepare your gear early – have a checklist so you don’t forget something. Make sure your boots are clean – attention to detail starts with your boots. First-aid blister bandages, bandaids, puffer if you need it etc. Plenty of water and start hydrating the day before the game to help with cramp.

Then there is the mental side. Build your confidence with your Personal Hero Portfolio (see more in the confidence section below).   

We have created a list of mental affirmations that will help with your mental preparation. This will be available soon.

The Observer

A striker must be an observer this video shows what can be achieved. This is what we call “Hide and Steal”. Watch what the player does at the 17-second mark. He had obviously planned the move. The plan would have been hatched from his observation of what the keeper did earlier in the game. 

We have identified 21 different opportunities based on observations from just the keeper. To get you started we have listed five below: