basically every drill, not flashy ones but effective. your control of the ball must be absolutely amazing , just focus on running with the ball. going left and right keeping your head up at all times every day
The key with trying to dribble like messi, is his style of dribble. He can cut and stop the ball on a dime with the outside of the boot, and cut it with the inside. Thats all he does, but its so effective, and his control is so good it just is amazing! He also can keep the ball almost glued to his foot at a incredibly fast pace. I'd say trying to do slalom dribbles with cones or sticks, and using your main dribbling foot to do it at a fast pace with just that foot, not using your other foot. He also does an old school style of dribble that maradona and baggio did, the 'bunny hop' style of dribble. Look at these videos and look at how both dribble and can stop on a dime. It should givbe you an idea on how you should learn to dribble. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtnGytTE0wk"]YouTube- Young Maradona in Spain ![/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwjbMQSNuw"]YouTube- Roberto Baggio - Three Decades of Passion[/ame]
i play a lot with a former Iranian pro who's about 6'4" who can does this, i don't think height has much to do with it i don't know how factual that is but i was about to say, just as important as the ball control is how quick his feet are. his feet react so much quicker than everybody else's. the speed and quickness with which he dribbles the ball makes the skill involved all the more impressive. OP i agree with Bolivianfuego try to emulate Messi's style if you can. you might not have Messi's talent, but against lesser than professional opponents you can still effectively maneuver the ball in a similar manner as him if you practice and develop the necessary ball control. my advice for when you're actually playing, dribble with light light touches. try and keep the ball as close to your foot at all times while still moving with pace.
Watch the videos, thats the best I could think of to describe it. LIke the poster above said, its the style of drrible where its a very gentle feint touch every step you make, constantly keeping the ball at your foot.
I've watched those before. I get what you mean now that you explained it. I thought it was a move, or something. Thanks for explaining!
Also let me add one more thing, for messi and great dribblers like Maradona, its all about waiting til the last second to maximize the cuts he does, literally mili-seconds before a defender stabs to the ball he cuts, which ends up making the defender over commit, as he is dribbling. That is key also, its the little cuts and the soft touch of his as he is dribbling the ball, that makes him so great. Try to always wait til' the last second to do the cut to REALLY mess up defenders, or heck, to win a call as sometimes you'll get clipped as you beat a defender lol. Check this video out, great stuff from maradona, which is basically what Messi tries to emulate when he dribbles. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTbm6wQYfzE"]YouTube- Maradona dribble skill collection vol, 20[/ame]
Yes, Robben does have the same style as Maradona/messi. He is always using his left foot, and cutting in from the right. He also is pure cuts, and fakes. He also has great control at high speed, and with his cuts, knows how to earn fouls too from contact. Smart player.
Lots of small/quick steps Keep the ball at your feet USE BOTH FEET that last part always seems ignored, but if you can use both feet to maneuver the ball it makes you twice as dangerous.
Learn to use moves that leverage the existing momentum of your body, so that you could change the pace, and the direction of where your body and the ball is going in a single move. Learning to use the momentum of your body is the biggest key. That's how you change pace rapidly. Hint: if you want to get good at this, ignore the popular Coerver DVDs and videos. They're worthless to a player.
The reason Lionel Messi is so great at dribbling is because.... 1)He spent countless hours working on basic dribbling techniques, especially inside/outside foot dribbling. You can't spend half the time he did working on your control and expect to be a world class dribbler. Anyone can become a proficient dribbler, but to become Messi-esque...... 2)Intelligence... you must know when and how to manipulate defenders and attack the spaces with speed & basic touches, this is what separates him from every other player on Earth. 3)Athleticism and body structure.... In order to do what Messi does at his pace, you have to have a low center of gravity plus good speed. There are misconceptions that only short athletes have a low center of gravity, while it is more common to see shorter players with better agility, taller players can be just as fast with just as much agility. All I can say is that natural athletes have a great center of gravity and your weight and build will determine what skills you have.
I've found that slalom dribbling through and around obstacles, incorporating stops and starts is a great way to improve dribbling ability as well as cutting abilities. Good luck, getting to Messi's level is quite a high bar to set!
Natural ability would have to be the defining factor. Players like Garrincha, who had bowed legs from birth and who is equally renown for his dribbling, and players like Messi, who required HGH treatment due to a birth defect, are born with the potential to do things other players can't. Beyond natural abilities, he's been working at this from a very young age almost every day of his life. He comes from Riverplate, which has produced more world class soccer players than any other place in the world. He graduated from a soccer academy that produced players like Xavi, Ineista, Puyol, among a plethora of other world class players. Everyone else got most of the other details covered. But, I would add a couple of more things. Because of Messi's short stature, defenders can become unsighted, especially very tall defenders who might get stuck staring at the back of his head, shoulder, or arms as they try to keep up with him when he dribbles onwards. Also, Messi anticipates and creates spaces very well at an almost instantaneous speed of thought.
Funny you should say this about Coerver, when a couple of posts above someone mentions Robben who happens to be the most famous Coerver student at the moment.
I disagree with this but i would like to know the reason to your opinion regarding the coerver moves. As far as i can see they are quite the useful bunch of simple moves that you are likelly to use in game at some point(well, that and footwork drills which are also pretty useful imo). They are not completelly related to the ability to swallom through deffenders but they do improve touch and develop comfort with the ball, which is quite important, so i cant see why you say they're useless.
It's not the moves that I have a problem with, I love the moves. All the Coerver tutorials I've seen place very little emphasis on the context or the "how and when" to use the move. Personally, I think context is as important or even more important than the actual move, but that's just my opinion. My opinion is that practicing moves in a vacuum has very little carryover to the actual game. The actual principle is quite simple; feint to get the defender to lean one way, accelerate going in another direction. I don't see how you fill 6 hours worth of DVDs with that. I don't really see how it's a "system" either. Unless you have infinite training time, I think learning 3-4 bread and butter moves and practicing applying them all the time will yield better results than practicing 20-30 moves and not knowing how to use any of them well.
Full disclosure, I'm a Coerver coach so take my statements for what you believe they are worth. The DVDs, yes they gloss over the how and when of the moves, but they do cover it in terms of what part of the field and when a certain move is most effective. As far as context, that's where the coach/trainer comes into play. So you're issue, hopefully, is more with the way the information is presented rather than the information itself. Coerver method doesn't practice in a vacuum. Unopposed moves practice, which are present in any training methodology, is done in a warm-up setting. Then players are moved into more game-like 1v1 scenarios and eventually into small-sided and full-sided games. Respectfully, the vacuum/acontextual nature of Coerver training is false. Further many top clubs and national federations have brought Coerver's founders in as consultants to help design their youth programs and up. Manchester Utd, French Federation, Marseille, Arsenal, Real Madrid to name a few. Japan's fast rise in national play owes a lot to Coerver training as well. The guy in the picture below, Rene Meulensteen, is one of the top Coerver coaches in the world and he's been part of Ferguson's staff for many years. As to the number of moves, there's really only about a dozen "family" moves. Meaning, unless you count scissors and double scissors as individual moves. Many "moves" are also just basic functions that any soccer program would teach: inside/outside cuts, step ons, etc... so when you cut all those out and stop double counting the "same" move, the grand total is something like 7 moves. But we teach these moves to youngsters not solely because of learning moves but to build coordination and balance as well and to build confidence on the ball. We do have many in our ranks that do the name disservice because they develop "Coerver Monkeys" (kids who'll do 5 consecutive moves when they already beat the player after the first move). My, biased, two cents on Coerver training.