A commonly asked question amongst the football community is what makes a great soccer player? What did Pele have? What did Maradona have? How can I become like Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi? There is no magic formula but there are key qualities that every top soccer player must possess. It’s a complex area but below are the 5 main soccer player attributes that you would see in a top footballer.
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Football is often referred to as a universal language that is spoken globally. Technique is the vocabulary of football and it’s the base from which all soccer players are created. Soccer technique can be split into 3 main areas which must be mastered to be a top player.
Just like learning a language, it does not happen overnight and will take years of learning with many hours of repetition. To be able to accomplish this is heavily dependent on the next soccer attribute.
Mindset is a very broad area with many contributing factors so again this is broken down into smaller segments. It is a key ingredient in a footballers make up and often determines which level you play at because the higher up the football ladder you progress, the more important the mindset becomes.
How often have you heard people saying words like “great vision”, “tactical awareness”, “footballing brain”, “composure on the ball”. These expressions constitute game intelligence and is probably one of the most difficult things to coach because football is random. You can’t predict the outcomes and you can’t cater for every scenario that is created on the pitch. To simplify, game intelligence is measured by the decisions and the speed at which they are made by a player on the pitch.
Is it true there is no “I” in “TEAM”? Football is a team sport where you win together and you lose together. There have been many occasions where you could say that one player above all others is the reason for a team’s success such as Diego Maradona’s time at Napoli in the 1980’s along with recent successes of Ronaldo and Messi but they all relied on their team mates to help bring that success and they will all acknowledge that. As a collective and harmonised unit, the team will generally perform much better so it is key for a player to be able to operate to their maximum ability within this environment. Saying that it can often be the individual that does something special in a game that raises the level of the team. It could be a superb bit of skill, a great goal or a great tackle. The effort that you put in will generally rub off on others so there is no excuse for not putting in 100% effort. In football the old saying, Together Everyone Achieves More is very true but the individual plays a big part too and that balance must be found.
At the professional level footballers are now seen as athletes. Their bodies are built and conditioned like top level athletes and this athletic ability can often set a player apart from others. At a younger age this element is far more difficult to judge because a soccer player’s body will develop at different stages which could be behind or ahead of others. In the early years, a player’s physique should be one of the last factors to look but when you do, these are the areas to focus on.
The journey to becoming a top soccer player will take many years so it is important to recognise that these 5 soccer player attributes will develop at different stages of a players adolescence into adult life but there is no doubt that all will be needed to be a top level soccer player. It also worth noting that all can be developed and worked on to improve a players abilities and take their game to the next level. Just remember to
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