WHY HEAD A SOCCER BALL CORRECTLY 

Heading the ball is unique to soccer. Since soccer players cannot pass the ball with their hands and arms, they often play the ball off their heads, and it's kind of flashy and fun to watch! Ultimately, a good header begins with your mental frame of mind, and being willing to go for it. However, done incorrectly may not only cause you to foul the ball, it can lead to serious head or neck injury. 

Most head injuries result from two players going after the ball at once and heads collide. Though soccer's not technically a contact sport and is generally safe, statistically, it has the highest rate of collision injury compared to any contact sport, including American football! And yet, soccer players need to approach the ball with unbounded confidence! 

You shouldn't be afraid of heading the ball. So, master the art of heading and you'll not only be a much more confident player, you'll minimize your chances of sustaining an injury. This brief guide covers the basics of why and how headers are done, and includes a few beginner soccer tips and drills to get your game safely 'headed' in the right direction. 

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PEP GUARDIOLA 

As Bayern Munich boss Pep Guardiola sits in his office this week, it will not be inconceivable to think that at some point he will wonder about the task awaiting him when he takes over at Man City in the English Premier League next season.  

It is as manager/coach/trainer that Guardiola seems to have become the SI Unit for measuring successes for young up-and-coming managers. Very unfairly too I feel. Young managers, it seems, are not allowed to fail, learn from their failures and then get better. Guardiola has won titles at his two clubs and at some point with Barcelona it seemed that he was rewriting every record going.  

Before he took over, Barcelona had lost the CL semis over two legs to Man United, and in the league they had finished in third place behind Villareal and 13 points behind Champions Real Madrid. In his first season in charge at Barcelona he reclaimed the title with 87 points from Real Madrid and then beat Manchester United in the Champions League final.  

In 2012, at the Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich inexplicably lost the CL final to Chelsea on penalties. Twelve months later Juup Heynckes led his team back to the final again and beat Dortmund in the Wembley. Heynckes was to be replaced by Guardiola later that summer.  

So Guardiola takes over the German champions, who had won the title by a whopping 25 points and were also European champions. In his first season he retained the title but lost in the semis on aggregate to a Lionel Messi-inspired Barcelona. This season he is on course to retain the Bundesliga while Bayern have qualified for the quarterfinals of the Champions League. All going well.  

The Premier League in England is not the most technical, nor is it filled with the world's current best players as much as it was nearly a decade ago. However, it is a unique league. Unique in that fans of even the lowest ranked sides expect their teams to get something from any visiting team irrespective of class, money or league position. It is a league that has a punishing schedule and no winter breaks. It is a league where industry and endeavor from lesser talented players readily bridge the gap between them and their more gifted opponents.  

City will present to Guardiola the challenge of managing a team not at the very top and one that does not have many homegrown players in their ranks. He will be managing, or will have to oversee, a turnover of players complete with the difficulties these present. While doing this he will be expected to win the league in his first season, as he has done in his previous two jobs.  

Guardiola loves his teams to dominate possession and is known to not be particular about his centre-backs physically. In England, crosses into the box are regular and driven set-pieces are the norm. Also, Man City only have a recent league pedigree, unlike both Barca and Bayern; so clubs will not give in so easily. As Louis van Gaal has found out and Jose Mourinho says every so often, in the Premier league you fight for every point. There is little room for coasting along in a season.  

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 http://samwww.supersport.com/football/england

SOCCER SHOOTING TIPS

• Observe the goalkeeper's position. Have they left a gap that you can exploit? 
• Select the best technique for your shot. A side foot shot will have greater accuracy, but an instep (laces) with good follow-through will have greater power. 
• Put your non-kicking foot alongside the ball. 
• Keep your head down and your eyes on the ball when striking. 
• Keep your body over the ball. 
• Make contact with the middle to top half of the ball. 
• Maintain your composure. 

Tips to improve your chance of scoring:  

• Shoot wide rather than high. There's a better chance of getting a deflection that will wrong-foot the goalkeeper. 
• Shoot low. It's harder for a keeper to reach shots along the ground because it's further for them to travel. It's easy for them to jump up and save, but much harder to crouch down and get it. 
• Shoot across the keeper. It's tougher for them to hold these shots, and means they could divert the ball back into the path of another attacker. 

Where Are the Most Shots Made? 

Ever wondered if there's actually a "sweet spot" in a soccer goal? A place where you could kick the ball and it would go in almost every time?  

Well, there may not be a definitive "sweet spot," but a recent study did take a look at where scored goals most often went into the net. Here are the results:  

• Top Left: 8 percent 
• Top Center: 4 percent 
• Top Right: 5 percent 

Ouch. As you can see, shooting high means you have a pretty low percentage of actually scoring.  

• Middle Left: 7 percent 
• Middle Center: 8 percent 
• Middle Right: 6 percent 

While you have a better chance of scoring if you shoot to the middle than up high, the odds still aren't much in your favor.  

• Bottom Left: 22 percent 
• Bottom Center: 21 percent 
• Bottom Right: 19 percent 

Look at these stats: 62 percent of all goals were scored low. This makes sense because it is very difficult for goalkeepers, especially tall ones, to get down to the ground. It's much easier and more natural for them to jump high.  

Also, looking at the statistics, 67 percent of goals were scored in the corners versus 33 percent down the middle. If you combine the two statistics and shoot low into the corner, you should have a much greater success rate in scoring goals.  

As with any soccer technique, you need to practice if you want to improve your shooting skills. Fortunately, the techniques used for shooting are similar to those used for passing. So you can build up two vital soccer techniques at the same time.  

But most importantly: If you see the goal, shoot!  

This one piece of advice is important enough to reiterate: You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. If you see an opportunity to shoot, take it! The only way these tips can help you is if you implement them, both in practice and in games.  

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