Soccer Speed – the essence of excellence

Soccer Speed – the essence of excellence

Today I will introduce the concept of the seven speeds of soccer. It is a German concept and credit must be given to the inventors – Gero Bisanz, Gunnar Gerrisch, Jurgen Weineck, and those who expanded it with relevant soccer drills and wrote a book on it. The book is...

soccer speed 1 – perception

Just to level set you, when we discuss speeds of soccer, we are talking about thought processes that take fractions of a second and action processes that don’t take much longer. Improving these speeds then is an exercise in making small improvements as well as in...

soccer speed 2 – anticipation

Soccer anticipation speed describes a player’s ability to predict the probability and end result of a game action situation. Because they can predict what will happen they can execute their own response/move that much faster. For example, if an outside defender can...

soccer speed 3 – decision making

Let’s review some typical scenarios you will likely have encountered during a soccer game: Youth Game Situation 1 Seven year old boys play in a league game on Tuesday evening, 5 a-side including a goalie on a small sized field. One player is very aggressive and always...

soccer speed 4 – reaction

Soccer reaction speed is defined as the ability to react to a previous action as perceived by the player.. We typically think of reaction and its speed in the context of goaltenders making saves. And that is true as goalkeepers are trained to react to the motion of...

soccer speed 5 – movement without ball

Vern Gambetta of Gambetta Sports Training Systems said it best: “Game analysis has shown that the average player will be in possession of the ball only 2% of total match time. What happens the other 98% of the time?” The answer is that players move, or at times rest....