I want to talk about how soccer works. Soccer to some people seems easy and simple, they think that it’s just kick and run. In reality that is not true at all, soccer is actually very complex, complex to the point where you’re always thinking even when you don’t have the ball, like thinking about where you should be on the field and how you can support the person with the ball.

My main position is middle defence which is basically the last defender. In my position what I think about constantly is who has the ball and where the ball is going to go when that person kicks the ball. I have to anticipate where and how hard they are gonna kick the ball so I can intervene. The people that are in front of me are the wide defenders; they tackle anyone who tries to run down the sideline, they are very important to me because if they weren’t there I would have to run back and forth a lot. The people in front of them are the middle. They are the people that constantly help everyone, they are supposed to be your backup.

Like for instance if I have someone cornered they come and double team the player. If I have nowhere to go with the ball and someone is pushing me hard I can just pass it to mid and they make use of the time and ball. In front of the middle are the wings; they are the players that are constantly running up and down the sidelines. They are constantly thinking about when they should start their run up the field to beat the defenders on the opposing team. They are also the ones who are dropping the ball back to the middle to get a run in. Normally coaches put the fastest kids on the wings and they don’t have good footwork, so when they get the ball they have to drop the ball to middle and middle sends a rocket ball up the field for the wings to run after.

Lastly, the first line of offence is the forward/striker these guys are not the guys to normally take shots these are the guys that typically drop the ball to middle for them to take a shot because it throws the defence off a little. On most teams strikers are normally the people with the good and fast footwork, also on my team they don’t use their footwork unless the middle isn’t there to help. They are the people that also run the least, they are normally the players who are tall for corner kicks.

All in all, soccer isn’t as simple as people make it out to be, and it is also not as passive as people might think, just from watching. Soccer is actually one of the most complex contact sports out there but some players ‘floop’ and make the game look bad.