 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. 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 five 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, what 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're 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 okay. So if I'm defending this player here I'm responsible for him. If he's on this side of me I am not a goal side of him he is goal side of me so I want to get a 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 on side. 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 them maybe he's trying to be sneaky clever okay 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 here 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 goal 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 cover that this guy's going to get goal 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 into space forward run into space or you want to think about supporting the ball okay giving different passing angles so helping him if he gets in trouble we're not just standing there 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 okay 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 okay 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 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 in 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 doubting themselves even more what 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 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