 If you want to learn how to defend 1v1 in soccer, this is the video for you. I'm going to teach you how to defend in 1v1 situations, make more tackles, and have more confidence so you can win the ball back for your team. You want to close the gap quickly, get low to the ground, stay light on your toes, and be ready to move with the attacker. Focus on moving your feet quickly and staying with him until you get an opportunity to make a tackle. There are three different types of tackles I'll show you in this video. Number one is the barge tackle, number two the chop, and number three the cutoff. When performing a barge tackle, you are simply trying to step through and kick the ball away with a strong foot. Go into the tackle hard, kick it away, and knock your opponent out of the way if you have to. If you can get the ball to a teammate, that is fantastic, but your main objective is to get the ball away from the attacker and out of trouble. When you are doing this tackle, the most important thing is that you go in strong. You may foul some players in the process, but if you get the ball first with a clean tackle and your opponent happens to get knocked over, that isn't a foul and the referee should allow play to continue. When performing a chop tackle, you are trying to stop the player from dribbling past you by chopping the ball back into your own path. For the longest time I used this tackle, but I would just stick my leg out and hope to get the ball. I did make a lot of tackles like this and you can as well, but it would also result in me getting beat far too often, and it would leave me flat footed, unable to try and chase the player down. Instead of just reaching for the ball with a dangling leg, I started jumping into the path of the attacker, and if I needed to at that point, I would reach my leg out to get the ball. This would allow me to get in front of the attacker, improve my balance and strengthen the tackle, and if I did happen to get beat, I would still be able to turn and run. In my opinion, the cutoff tackle is the best type of tackle, however you don't always have the space and time to perform it. Instead of lunging in and trying to get the ball right away, just quickly turn and cut off the attacker with your body. Once he eliminates the chance of lunging in and getting beat, anticipate that he is going to push the ball past you, stay low to the ground, quickly turn, then get your body between the player and the ball. If you can get in the habit of staying on your feet and moving quickly in 1v1 situations rather than committing yourself by diving in, here are a few mistakes that are pretty common. The first thing is diving in, especially when your opponent is turned. I don't need to necessarily win the ball at this point, I just need to force him to go backwards. But if I'm lunging for the ball and committing myself too much on one side, it's going to be very easy for him to turn. So just think about forcing him backwards and maybe winning the ball from behind, staying bull side of your man. The next mistake is approaching but not getting low to the ground. It's very difficult for me to stay with my opponent if I'm flat footed and I'm defending high. Remember defend low, it's going to make you a much better defender, allow you to move quicker side to side. So this is another common mistake, just running in and not really putting effort or focus into your defending. The next thing is being flat footed or too square. So as you can see there I got nutmegged and again here I can't move quickly if I'm square. So remember you want to approach him on an angle rather than facing him straight on, think about positioning your body to force him to go left or force him to go right. Almost trap him in a certain direction. So that's a very common mistake. The other one we kind of talked about is lunging and rather than lunging you want to be light on your toes and just turn and be ready to sprint at all times and just focus on getting your body in front of the defender rather than always just sticking your foot out. So to recap here are some of the major points. The first one is closing, denying space. Do not give your opponent time to breathe. Close that space quickly. Once you get close to your opponent that's when you need to become more cautious. Get low to the ground. The next thing we talked about was jockeying in a one-on-one position. Remember you just want to stay in front of him, be light on your toes and wait for the right opportunity to stick a strong tackle. After jockeying we talked about anticipating. So if you know he's going to have a bad touch, he's had some in the past or you can see that it's a heavy touch. Get in there. Do not hesitate. Put in a strong tackle. Finally, rather than always lunging, you want to think about turning and just being ready to sprint. Staying on your toes.