 What's up, do you have a big game coming up and you really want to perform because I'm about to show you how to play soccer better in your next match. If you don't know about me, I used to be a huge underachiever, but through obsessive self-improvement I found my success. Earned a college scholarship, played for my national football team, a YouTube channel with over 100 million views, I've helped players worldwide and I'd love to help you improve faster and achieve more. For the longest time I did what most players do. When I practiced by myself I spent time on freestyle tricks and hitting free kicks. The truth was I was underperforming and I wasn't playing well in games. It was only when I decided to change the way that I trained and really focused on becoming a better player every time I showed up to my next game that I started to see changes in my performances. And eventually I created some reliable strategies that helped me perform more consistently and my coaches, teammates and everyone started to notice. Let me show you 5 strategies that you can use to play better soccer in your next match. Train with purpose, intensity and consistency. You have a game coming up. You need to make sure that your training is actually going to make you a better player in that game. So if you're just spending all your time doing freestyle tricks and hitting dead balls which you do maybe once or twice per game, is that actually going to help you improve? Yes you can do those things but it's more important to focus on things like finishing, shooting, dribbling with speed and intensity, practicing your ball control, working on your sprinting, your speed and your fitness. Make sure that you're using intensity so if the drills are easy, you're going too slow, you're not pushing yourself, it's not replicating a match speed and it's not going to help you in a game. Consistency is so important to train every day. On the field now, what you want to think about when you are defending your man is being goal side inside. So what I mean by that goal side, you are closer to your goal than the player that you are defending. So if I'm defending this player here, I'm responsible for him. If he's on this side of me, I am not goal side of him. He is goal side of me. So I want to get goal side of him. Now obviously if you're playing offside, you don't want to be sitting back here because you'll keep everyone onside. So if you're on that last line then you can get up here, you'll force him to come up and you still have to be aware of him. Maybe he's trying to be sneaky clever. But in most situations, you want to be goal side. So closer to your goal than that player on the ball. Now you still want to be close enough to them that when they receive that ball, you're right on top. Okay, so number one goal side, inside. So I want to be inside. I want to be closer to my net than him. So if he's here and I'm there, he is inside of me. So he is on the inside of the goal. He has a better opportunity to score. If I'm defending, I want to get narrow, tight to my other defenders. I want to be inside of him. The player who is closest to the ball needs to press. Now in certain situations, let's say somewhere up here where you're further away from your goal, you can press with more intensity. You can run in there really fast, risk it a little, risk getting beaten a little bit and press with high intensity. In other situations, let's say you're in a one-on-one here, you need to be a little more cautious. However, you still need to close the space and not allow this player on the ball to make forward passes to get crosses into the box or shots onto your net. Okay, so if you are the closest player on the ball, you need to press, close that space down. Everyone else wants to think about covering. So press, if you're closest to the ball, you want to press. If you're not closest to the ball, you want to think about covering the next potential pass. Okay, so let's say the ball gets shifted out here. Okay, how does everyone adjust? So who is closest to the ball? This player is probably closest to the ball. He's going to press. Okay, everyone else and we'll make some runs by other players, something like that. Okay, everyone else is thinking about covering. So he's going to come in here, cover this. He's going to come in here, remember, full side inside, cover that. He might cover something like this. He's going to come around here, think about blocking this pass off and he can even think about doubling up something like that. He might come in here and cover that. This guy's going to get full side inside like that. We're nice and narrow. Everyone's thinking about covering the next potential pass. So when you are attacking, do not stand still. Now, saying that if I have lots of open space, sometimes the best thing is to stand still. So you need to be aware of where the space is. If you are not in open space, you're getting defended. Well, then you want to think about your movement. So do not stand still. Now, what types of movements should you make? Well, when this player is on the ball, you either want to think about making a forward run into space, a forward run. If you like this content, check out the Soccer Success Planner. You can download it for free. There's a link in the description below. And for advanced training, check out the Online Soccer Academy. A forward run into space, forward run into space. Or you want to think about supporting the ball. Giving different passing angles. So helping him if he gets in trouble, we're not just standing there and watching him. We want to think about, hey, if this guy does get in trouble, where should I be? So I can give him the best possible way to get out. Think about playing forward whenever possible. And you want to think about keeping possession. So this ball is the most valuable thing on the field. We want to keep possession. We do not want to give it away to the other team. However, if we are keeping possession and we're not making anything happen, and we're just keeping possession and we're forcing ourselves to play deeper and deeper and getting ourselves into dangerous positions just because we want to keep possession, well, this can be a very dangerous game. So you want possession with a purpose. So in order to play with purpose, you want to think about every time I can get my head up, I want to play a forward pass. Now that doesn't mean just kicking up the field and everyone run after it. What that means is I want to be composed, but when I get my head up and I see that I have a teammate in a position and an advanced position, I want to get him the ball. Because when we do that, then we can start creating chances for our team. Okay, so whenever possible, get your head up. Can you play forward? Get your head up, can you play forward? And when you have that mentality of always trying to play forward, always trying to create chances without risking, without forcing the play and giving the ball away, okay? If you realize that you're in a situation where, hey, this is really high pressure, I can't play forward in this position, well, now we will keep possession, we'll change the angle, and then we'll try to play forward again. It's one thing to know what to do. It's a completely different thing to do it at match speed. So when you're in the game, focus on your speed of play. Defensively, how quickly can you get into position? Attacking, how quickly can you execute your basic skills? The food you eat has a direct impact on your energy levels and your performances. So if you provide your body with better fuel, you will have a better performance. Now, good nutrition doesn't just happen on game day. Good nutrition is a lifestyle, but the quality of food that you eat, it will improve or diminish and ruin your energy levels, but also your mood, your mental clarity, your ability to recover, your muscle growth, and so much more, food is so important. So just a few general rules. Eat real food that comes from the earth, not from boxes, not from cans, real natural ingredients. Prepare your own meals so you know what you're putting into the food. Learn to enjoy cooking because it's something that you have to do every day. And don't eat too closely to game time because your body does use energy to digest food and you want to use that energy to perform in your match. So make sure you give yourself a little time to digest. Drinking enough water is crucial to your energy levels and your performances. If your body is even slightly dehydrated, it will not be able to perform at its optimum ability. So make sure that you're drinking water throughout the day, not just on game day, every day of your life. This is a lifestyle. So you want to make sure that your pee, your urine is clear. That's your goal every day. Earlier in this video, I said, I think I know the number one reason that you and other players may not be playing well on game day. If you want to be more consistent, this is it. So why do some players play so well in training and practices, but they don't play well in games? They have the necessary skills, but they're not putting them into quality performances. Why is this? It's the way that they talk to themselves. It's the way you talk to yourself in your mind. In both situations, you are the same player. You have the same skills. So why are you performing well in one situation and poorly in the other? It's the way you perceive the situation and the way you talk to yourself in your mind. And look, it's easy to be confident and talk to yourself positively when things are going well. Everyone's on your side, the coach likes you. It's easy to be confident and talk to yourself in the right way in that situation. But how do you talk to yourself when things are going poorly? When most players make mistakes, they're not playing well. That's when they start to get down on themselves. They start the negative self-talk and they start downing themselves even more, which you need to do when that happens in the game is you need to positively talk yourself out of that situation. So you need to say, I can come back from this. I can learn from that mistake. I can do better next time. Give me that ball right now. I want to make up for my mistake. I want to show these guys how good I actually am. So when times are bad, you need to talk to yourself positively. It's so important. Have you ever played against a player who had less skill than you or a team who had less skill than you and they weren't as good as you, but they worked extremely hard and they ended up beating you. You should have beat them, but they beat you. This happens all the time in sports. This happens all the time in life and hard work gets rewarded. If you want to improve the quality of your performances, work harder. Most players would say that they work hard and you may even be saying this to yourself right now, but I want you to be very honest and I want you to evaluate your effort in practices and your effort in games, your effort in your individual training sessions. How hard did you actually work? Could you take it to another level? Because most players say they work hard, but if you were to analyze and watch their performances, their actions would definitely not match their words. Never let a lack of effort be the reason that you lost. If you were outperformed, you were beat by a really good team or a really good player, fine, that's life. You'll take that lesson and you'll learn from it, you'll get motivation from it. But never let the reason that you lost be because you chose to give up, you chose to not give your best effort. So what does hard work look like? It can be closing players down, not giving them any time to play or get their head up, beating your opposition to the ball and choosing to be strong on the ball, not getting pushed around. It means getting forward and tracking back when things don't work out, not complaining, not whining, just putting in the work, working hard off the ball when you don't have the ball at your feet, making four runs to get in the box and tracking back to help out on defense. It's so important that when you're playing, you do not stop running when you are tired, you stop when the job is done. If you like this content, check out the Soccer Success Planner, you can download it for free, there's a link in the description below. And for advanced training, check out the Online Soccer Academy.