Top 5 Things A Soccer Player Must Have

1. Discipline

Discipline is a desirable virtue in many aspects of life, regardless of whether you are a painter, a sculptor, a doctor, or a soccer player!

As a soccer player, the primary reason you need discipline is so that you can be coachable. A good player is of no worth to a team if they aren’t coachable.

Coachability ensures that you can be critiqued without taking it personally; and that you can receive constructive feedback, taking responsibility for your mistakes, and doing better the next time around.

A disciplined player will not only be willing to learn, but they will also seek out feedback and integrate it to better their skills and sportsmanship. 

Discipline not only guarantees coachability, but it also ensures that you have the self-motivation it takes to practice diligently.

There are days you won’t want to get out of bed or lift a finger. There are days when the weather won’t make you want to be outdoors doing drills and running laps. Sticking to a healthy diet will prove challenging, and at times, it will even feel torturous.

Do you know what keeps you going, though? It’s discipline. 

In addition to discipline, you will need to first have the right soccer gear that can help you perform at your best in every single game. 

2. Mental strength

Being a great football player will not happen overnight. It might not even happen over one year.

You’ll face rejection. You’ll face failure. You’ll face criticism for couches, fans, and teammates. It takes a great deal of mental strength to keep going despite all that.

You will need composure to perform under pressure when the stakes are high, and the victory of your team lies entirely on your shoulders. You will need composure to make rational decisions and strategize soberly during penalty kicks, breakaways, or in the last minutes of a game. 

You will need mental strength to accept defeat, just as much as you will need mental strength to persevere and deal with rejection. 

3. Passion

Being a good soccer player is simply not enough. You need to love the sport and be passionate about it. 

You will need passion if you are going to put up with incomprehensible hours of practice out on the pitch working on your technique.

You will need passion if you are going to spend countless hours watching football matches, analyzing them, and reflecting upon a player’s performance. 

At times, the player you’re watching might even be you, whereby you go through past recordings of your games, seeing where you can improve and what your strengths are.

If you want to be a great soccer player, then you have to be ready and willing to live, breathe and eat football; and doing so takes great passion and unimaginable love for the game. 

4. Endurance

How physically fit are you? Can you maintain your performance during all 90 minutes of a match? Do you have what it takes to keep going despite all the fatigue you might be feeling?

Endurance is a combination of your physical fitness and mental strength. 

As physical fatigue increases, you will find that your control, focus, and decision-making capabilities become increasingly more challenging to maintain. 

You, therefore, need to be able to rise above it all and perform both physically and mentally for the entire duration of a match. 

5. Technique

Of course, all the factors named above would be useless if you do not have the correct technique that’s required of any soccer player.

The technique required to be a great soccer player is a cumulation of your body control, ball control, dribbling skills, and passing accuracy.

Body control requires you to move fluidly while optimizing your balance and coordination. Rather than physical fitness, body control is all about the correctness of form.

Ball control requires that you be able to turn quickly and sharply with the ball, all the while maintaining clean first touches and successfully protecting the ball from your opponents.

You may like this

• The Next Generation of The Best Soccer Players
• Five Factors Which Define a Soccer Rebound Net
• How to Nail Your Fantasy Football