 Kids get caught up in things that don't really matter. When you get your basics down, then you can do cool tricks like that. But in this video, I want to talk about some soccer drills for kids, but anyone who wants to improve their skills, beginners. And also, I want to talk from the perspective of a parent or a coach trying to help your kid improve. 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. So first of all, footwork stuff that you've seen 100 times. Yes, little ones. When you're five years old, three years old, taps, they're doing these little ball things. OK, these are silly, but it's just building comfort with the ball. Different touches in different ways. When you get that foundation, then it's moving. So moving forward, moving backwards. And I'm going to guess there's a lot of players who consider themselves advanced that cannot manipulate the ball with these basic skills. So forward, these rolls. Just getting your kid comfortable with the ball, moving in different ways. Now, when you're a parent or a coach, especially with young kids, do not overcoach. Let them figure it out themselves. Give them a drill. Give them the guidance. But if you're trying to get. Hey, what's up? I hope you're finding this content helpful. Watch this all the way to the end if you want to find out which subscriber got this video's special shout out. Give them a tip every second time they touch the ball or every 20 seconds. It's too much information. They are smart enough to figure it out on their own, but you have to give them the chance. So let's start with those footwork drills. OK. Then encouraging basic dribbling, running with the ball. Most kids, when they start, it's awkward to run with the ball. Just encourage them to run in a straight line with the ball. Become natural with this. OK. So head is up. It's nice, natural stride. Arms are moving. It's flowing. It's not awkward. It's in my natural strides with the outside of my foot. When I want to turn inside, outside, I would start inside, outside, and roll back like that. When they get comfortable, you can go croy. And focusing on, like I always say, quality of the touch, but also quality of the movement. Getting low to the ground when you turn from a young age. And if you notice, always using both feet. So I would start there. If you want to use cones, cones can be good. My only problem with cones is it's not always matrilistic. However, when we're talking about young kids, we just want to get them comfortable in the ball. Lots of touches. The way to improve is through repetitions. We all want to get better, but if we analyze how much we're actually practicing and how much time we're actually spending on the ball, how many touches you're actually getting on the ball. The reason I have a decent touch is not because I was naturally given that skill. It's because I've spent tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of hours on the ball. As a young kid, to now and still improving every day. So first one, just these little touches. I'll let them go in and out of the cones with as many touches as they want. Next I would do like an inside tap. Something like that. Okay, learning to manipulate the ball, moving with the ball. Because in a game, yes, these are good, but I don't receive the ball and do this on the spot. If I do that, I'm gonna get tackled. I'm gonna get in trouble. So encouraging them to use different skills, but moving with the ball. When they start to get a little bit of success, add the speed, okay? When you're training, whether you're a kid, parent, coach, and encouraging your kid to train, if they're going nice and easy because they don't wanna screw up, that is not gonna make them better. It's gonna give them a little bit of confidence in practice, but when they get in the field and there's pressure and you have to play faster, they're not going to be ready. So training by yourself or training your kid, encourage them to go fast, pick up the speed, and make mistakes just like this. Because if I'm not making mistakes, I'm not learning. If it's always easy, matches are gonna be hard. But if my training's hard, I'm making mistakes because I'm pushing the speed, I'm getting tired, I'm learning to play with heavy legs. My practice is hard, the game is gonna be easier. Okay, so those are some things that I would recommend for young kids, soccer drills for kids. You can start it as far as footwork and ball mastery, bit of dribbling. Next, you can do some ball control. And I talked about this in different videos. But for a young kid, this is probably where it is, kick and catch. Okay, kick, backspin, you can start with a bounce, catch, catch, getting good backspin on the ball. Keeping it to you, trying to replicate the same touch. Doesn't go somewhere else every other time, okay? Backspin on the ball. So I'm hitting here, forcing the ball to come back to me. 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, okay, so I can keep control of it. If that's easy, start like this, kick, bounce. Okay, just keep control of the ball. Wherever it goes, move your feet. A lot of kids, they have a decent touch. But when you watch them juggle, so flat footed. So as soon as the ball gets away, it's gone. They're not even trying to get there. You will get there more times than you believe if you just have a little more sharpness in your toes. If that ball goes, I'm quick to get under it. Okay, if it goes, don't give up on it. Go and get it right away. So kick and catch, little curl or a little bounce in between, something like that. Then as I always say, encourage you to do basic juggling, set your record. If the record today is five, that's fine. That's where you start, tomorrow you try to make it six. Next you can do air controls, which we've all seen before. Okay, if your child, if the kid is struggling to kick the ball up with their hands, start here. Or start kick the ball up with their feet. Start with the hands, but receiving in different ways. Okay, so inside the foot, outside of the foot, anything you want, but controlling out of the air and controlling with different parts of the body. When you're doing this, the objective is to bring that ball down to the ground as quickly as possible. You'll see the difference here. A lot of kids, this is their first touch. They're going through the ball rather than bringing the ball down to the ground. So think about getting the ball down to the ground as quickly as possible. So you can play faster, have a good speed of play. You have watched some of my videos. You've seen me here before, and especially for young kids, I think this is one of the best places you can be. It's with a ball and a wall, getting more repetitions. Remember I said, the way you want to improve your skills faster is more repetitions. Everyone thinks that they're doing enough or they're getting enough touches on the ball when really they're not. So if I'm practicing shooting by myself in a field, I'm getting one shot in the time that I could get 20 shots, okay? So especially as a young kid, it's all about repetitions. The more repetitions you get into each foot, the more confident they will become. So let's talk about passing. Think of just do basic passing on a wall. For a young kid, it's probably too touch to start. Really short distance, too touch, focusing on good contact, good first touch, get it out of your feet. And what am I always doing? I'm playing with both feet all the time. If you're a parent, encourage your child to play with both feet from the very beginning. It's okay if they have one foot that's better or one that they favor, and they use it more in a match. But when they're training by themselves, really encourage one with the right, one with the left. Okay, so super basic. Get those touches, receiving in different ways. I have other passing tutorials if you want to see. But really short distance on the toes, good quality pass, body over the ball, fall through to the contact, fall through to the target, flex foot, light on the toes, both feet. Okay, next, practice shooting against a wall. Good contact with the laces. That's probably where you want to start. Okay, again, both feet, it's not about power. All this is about getting good flush contact off the laces. I'm just trying to make good contact with the laces because a lot of kids will struggle. They'll either hit it on the inside of the foot or they'll hit it on the outside, especially on the weaker foot. It feels awkward, they twist it. Try to get really good straight, flex contact through the ball. It can just start like that. Okay, touch, just push through the ball, push through the center of the ball, make it go forward, flex contact with both feet. Now, as I said, give them a few tips, especially if you're a coach with young players or a parent trying to help your child improve. Give them a few tips, let them get a whole bunch of repetitions. They will figure it out. As a player, you need to be smart enough to not do the same thing a hundred times in a row. If you keep pulling that ball to the left, don't allow yourself to do that anymore. Ask why is the ball always going over there? What do I need to change about my technique? If you have that mindset every time you practice, it improves so much faster because so many players, yes, they're putting in the time, but what they're getting out of that practice time is not good enough because they may be getting repetitions, but they're not analyzing those repetitions. Don't practice just to practice, practice with the intention of getting better. And in order to do that, I have to actually think about what I'm doing. I have to analyze why did it go there? Why was it a good pass? Why was it a good shot? Why was it a bad shot? Take that information, learn from your mistakes. Remember, if you're making mistakes, that's a good thing. It means you can improve faster. So don't get frustrated, especially as a young kid. As a parent, when your child does something good, praise them, give them encouragement. Tell them that was good. Encourage them to do that again. As a player, you need to have that same mindset or the same self-talk in your own head because if you tell yourself you always suck, you're always gonna suck. If you tell yourself, okay, today I'm just gonna get a little bit better. What can I do to make that happen? Focus on finding the solution, not complaining about the problem. You will improve a lot faster. 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.