 In this video I'm going to help you improve your ball control and your first touch by explaining several different ways to control a football. 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. Before the ball even comes to you with all these types of receiving, I want you to think about where am I going to go with my first touch? So play with the pass, don't receive the ball and then decide, okay now I want to go here. You want to get in the habit of receiving into space. So play that pass again. So how do you do that? You have to be aware of where the space is. The pass comes to me. I already know I want to go here into space, okay? So start thinking about where you want to go with your first touch. Now coming back to first touch, let's say you just want to receive the ball right in front of you so you can play a pass and move the ball quickly. So let's focus on receiving technique. So first of all, you want to think about your body positioning. I don't want to be up like this, play me a pass. I don't want to be up like this, flat footed. Yes, I can have a good touch, but can I react quickly if I have to? Say the pass again. So again, athletic stance and then I can shield the defender. I can move quickly if I have to. So think about getting lower to the ground, getting your body behind the ball. What you don't want to do is play me a pass, play it over here kind of. I don't want to be lunging to get my touch in front of the ball if I can get my body in front of it. Play the same pass. Okay, I want to be moving. So again, my body is behind the ball. Even if I do have a bad touch, maybe it baubles up, bounces into my knee or my chest, I can still control it as opposed to this one. So get your body behind the ball. So lots of different ways you can receive the ball. Play it fast. You can receive with the inside of your foot. Again, you can receive with the outside. You could even play it again. Yeah, you can receive with the sole of your foot, something like that. So lots of different ways for you to control the ball, but think about those basics. Knowing where you want to go, athletic stance, controlling your body, and then really focusing on the quality of your first touch. Actually watching your foot meet the ball. Okay. A lot of players will play the ball. They're so concerned about what's happening here that they're not actually looking at the ball, meet their foot, and then it hits the wrong part of their foot and baubles off or sometimes it goes underneath because they're not focused. I'm still, I'm getting my body behind it and then my touch is into space. Okay. A lot of times people will do something like this. Just throw it out here for me. So say, for example, the ball is out here. And instead of attacking the ball, they're putting their foot out, waiting for it to come down. Go again. So I want to move to it and get in front of it. Play me out here a little more. Okay. I want to move in front of it rather than putting out a limb. I want to play again rather than doing something like that and hoping that you get a good touch on it. So move your feet, get your body behind the ball one more time. And then I can play quickly. When that ball is coming into my chest or my foot, I'm thinking about which direction I want to go. So not just hitting it, letting it come down and then going. I'm opening up either way, attacking space, but really just getting the habit of attacking the ball. If you can go to it, maybe the pass wasn't hard enough. You want to come to that ball. Okay. If it's on the bounce like that, it's a good example. You want to get over it, attack that ball. Don't wait for it, play it again, same pass. Don't wait for it, don't wait for it. Defenders already come and won that ball. So think about attacking the ball rather than waiting for it to come to you. The ball is coming out of the air. You're really thinking about taking the bounce out of it. So if I am doing something like that with my toe, okay, I'm not just hitting it like that. I'm basically absorbing the ball, bringing it down to the ground. Okay, so I'm cushioning it down. Same thing if I want to bring it down with my thigh, I'm not going through it like that. I'm bringing my thigh down to the ground so I can play quickly. With my chest, okay, instead of trying to pop through it, that's just more time for the defender to close you down. Then you take this one, then you take that one, as opposed to cushioning it, trying to bring it down quickly. So think about those things. There's lots of different ways for you to practice. You can just put it up in the air and practice all these different techniques, whatever they may be, okay? Your skill is going to come from the amount of time that you put into practice. And the more you practice this, the better you will become. 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.