 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. In this video, I want to give you some helpful moves that you can use as a midfielder in the middle of the pitch. So first I need to start by saying that as a midfielder, usually your best move is not using skills or taking lots of touches. It's simply getting the ball out of your feet and playing a pass to a teammate. So you need to realize that your job as a midfielder isn't to do all these tricks in the middle of the field. Yes, sometimes you will need to use those, and I'll give you ideas on when to do that. But you want to realize that your job is to create chances to feed your teammates and to keep possession of the ball. So if you're in the midfield, let's say you're playing central midfield and you're taking 10 touches on the ball, you're doing lots of tricks and you try to beat a player and you lose it in the middle of the midfield. This is very dangerous. If you do that out on the wing, well, we have probably nine players behind the ball. It's out wide. It's not right in the center, so it's not as big of a deal. If you do it as a striker trying to beat the last defender, we have 10 players behind the ball. But if you do that as a midfielder, defensive midfielder, central midfielder, even a wide midfielder, but in your own area in the middle third of the field and you lose possession of the ball. Well, that puts your team in a very dangerous position. Now, I'm not trying to scare you from doing moves. I just want you to realize that the best move is usually getting the ball out of your feet and playing a firm pass to a teammate. So pass or move number one is just play the pass. Now, when I am going to do some moves in the midfield, it's usually more about keeping possession rather than actually beating the player. So first of all, even before I receive the ball, I want to be aware of where the defender is. So if I'm receiving the ball as a midfielder here playing the pass and I'm receiving it here, as I always talk about in my videos, you want to get the space for yourself. So I'm not creating that space for myself. I didn't even know where he was. He could have snuck up on me. He could have came in front of me and won the ball. So instead, I want to be aware of where he is. OK, I know he's here. I know the pass is coming eventually. I want to find a little bit of space so I can receive it here. And now if I have to go at him, I can go at him or I'm just going to have a better percentage of keeping the ball, a better chance of keeping the ball. So find your space. Now, as I talked about, yes, play the ball. Let's say you're trying to dribble into space. Now, when you get the ball, obviously, again, you don't want to freeze. So you don't want to stop the ball dead. You want to keep that ball moving. And sometimes that's just changed direction. But it's better to keep moving, changing direction than to just stay still to freeze and to not really know what to do. So as soon as you have that ball, your feet, you're either getting out of your feet, playing a pass or you're keeping it moving, making yourself more difficult to tackle. Now, let's come back to some of these moves that I usually use in the midfield. So I receive that pass and let's say I want to go into this space, but he closed me down. OK, one of the best moves that you can use is just a turn. So let's say it didn't work out. OK, keep your body between the defender and the ball. But just turning is going to create some space for yourself. So you can play a pass. Play the ball again. So what you don't want to do when you're turning like that is instead of, as you can see, I'm turning with my back to the defender. But if I'm turning like this in front of him, OK, yes, I can still beat him. And yes, if I have good skills and I'm sharp with my change of direction, I can beat him. But I'm risking losing it here by showing him the ball. So I'm saying change direction. But if you're changing direction here, you're giving him a chance to put in a foot and make a tackle. So what I want to do instead, if I've asked one more time, please. Find your space. OK, I'm turning my body between the ball, creating space. And you'll find, start doing this when you're playing quick turns. It's going to be tough for the defender to get to the ball. Another few moves you can use are things like this. So again, it's about protecting the ball. So I do something like that. Now, again, I don't want to show him that ball too much. So I'm keeping it away from him to create space. So pulling it away, getting stuck on your foot. Pulling away to create space to play a pass. One more time. So other things might be just something like that. A little change of direction. OK, pulling it away from the defender. Again, I don't want to pull like this, cross him. I want to do this stuff, get stuck in my feet. I'm pulling it away so that I can play the pass. So let's talk about if you do want to make a move. Because sometimes, let's say you're on a break. You just receive the ball, your team is breaking out. If you beat one guy, well, now it might open up everything for your team. You're in a dangerous position where you can play that through ball, play that forward pass and hurt the other team. So usually, I'll keep it very simple. But especially when someone's rushing at you, a quick step over in the midfield will create a lot of space. Just think about being quick and precise with your movements. So play me again. So if I get in here and again, I take too many touches, I may be able to get out of it, but you're not giving your coach a good time. You're not giving your teammates a good time. And you're potentially going to lose that ball, which again will result in a chance for the other team. So when you're in these situations, think about one quick move and then explode away. So play again, find space, okay? And sometimes the best move, I always say, just to change a pace, change a direction. So think about those things, play again. Sometimes the best move is just a pass, getting yourself turned, finding space, not receiving it right here if you don't have to. You know that ball's coming. You should already be moving, anticipating, okay, you know what's here. Boom, we can play like that. When you are dribbling, think about protecting the ball. If you are doing these little moves to protect the ball, think about pulling away, creating space, so you can play your pass. And finally, I'll grab this one here. When you are making a move in the midfield, one quick move. 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.