Just Play Beach Soccer

One friend of mine asked me recently why all men are crazy about playing football or what is known in United States as soccer. I am sick of explaining things that you can only understand based on personal experience. But although I managed to provide her with a luminous answer, she came back stating yet another question. "Is it different to play soccer on the grass than to play it on the beach?" That was a good one. "Of course it is different," I replied. Beach soccer, as you can tell by its name, is a sport played on the beaches; preferably during spring or summer time. Although it has been played informally for decades, it was given its official name and rules only recently and specifically in 1992. Since then it managed to become a rather popular sport and I believe that if you really want to learn something about soccer you should better start playing it on the beach.

Playing soccer on the beach is considered by many fans as the paradise of the apprentice. The soft-sand playing surface can correct some usual mistakes for a beginner, as the ball often stacks on it. Actually, the element of sand does only facilitate the efforts of new players, but it is considered a heavy obstacle even for those experienced ones that wish to show off their abilities. Plus the compact pitch -measuring 28 x 37 meters if there is an official beach soccer facility- is by far smaller than the grass field and makes scoring easier, even for players who decide to try it for the first time.

A great advantage of beach soccer is the fact that one needs no special equipment to play it. An adequate size ball and the sand of the beach are more than enough for one to begin exploring this game's unique character. Even when no organized facility on the beach exists, those interested to play beach soccer need only two canes to symbolize the area of a goalpost. Canes or just a pile of clothes are preferable in comparison to heavy stones or even huge blocks of rocks, which can be very dangerous for feet injuries, as shoes are not allowed in this game. Thus, if you are on a sandy beach, it is a sunny day, and you have nine friends willing to join you, you can start playing beach soccer. When you do experience it, let me know if you liked it. Most importantly, let your girlfriend know!

When I finished my lecture about beach soccer my friend seemed excited. "I will play it every single weekend," she said. But before you ask yourselves how much time should you invest in practicing this sport, before you can consider yourselves good soccer players, try playing it for awhile. Since you cannot play beach soccer all year around, unless you move to California or Florida every time you have a beach soccer need, you have to exercise your soccer playing abilities on the actual lawn ground. Believe me when I tell you that it is not that easy there too!

Kadence Buchanan writes articles on many topics including Outdoors, Recreation, and Fitness

Learn The Basics Of The Game Of Soccer

The game of soccer is played in two halves, the lengths varying between age groups, but professionals, college and high school play two 45 minute halves. The most obvious rules to soccer are that the game is played between two teams, consisting of nine players and a goalie. The players on each team are divided into offense and defense, and are only allowed to play the soccer ball with their feet. The main objective in soccer is to kick the ball into the opposing teams? goal, scoring a point, or a goal. Only the goalie is allowed to use either his or her hands as well as feet.

Soccer players will often practice ?juggling?, which is a skill that consists of keeping the ball in the air through the use of the feet, knees, thighs, head, or chest, all legal places on the body to control the ball. The use of the hands or the arm will result in the opposing team taking possession of the ball.

When a player on one of the teams kicks or knocks the ball out of bounds on the two long sides of the soccer field, the opposing team them takes possession of ball by doing a ?throw-in?, in which both of the feet must remain on the ground while the player throws the soccer ball back into play. If the soccer ball is kicked out of bounds over the line of their own goal, it then results in a ?corner kick? where the opposite team takes the ball to the corresponding corner and kicks the ball back into play to one of their teammates. However, if the team kicks the ball out of bounds over the goal line of the opposing teams? goal, the play will then turn to a ?goal kick? taken by one of the defensive players of that team.

?Fouls? are called under a number of circumstances. A few of them are when a player touches the ball with his hand or arm, if a player slide tackles another player, excessive pushing, tripping or force, unsportsmanlike conduct, or off-sides (when the offense of one team is closer to the goal they are trying to score on than that teams? defense; unless the ball was there first). In these circumstances, the referee will generally call the ball dead in the spot where the foul occurred, and give the opposite team a ?free kick?.

In the case that the regulation time of the soccer runs out while the score is still tied, it will often result in a ?shootout? where the goalie of one team is up against a single player from the opposing team. The first one to score a goal wins the game.

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How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Superiority Method

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Superiority method. The Superiority method is based on goal difference (superiority) for both teams in a fixture over the past set number of games.

Here are the basic rules?

Get goal difference for each team. This could be either;

a) All home games only for the home team and all away games only for the away team over the last N games.

Or

b) All games for each team over the last N games.

Next we need to count each occurrence of a particular goal difference. We need to do this for both the home side and the away side. We create a table which holds the counts and in our case we have chosen to have thirteen rows in our table that represent the following goal differences:

INDEX GOAL DIFF
1..........>-5
2..........-5
3..........-4
4..........-3
5..........-2
6..........-1
7..........0
8..........1
9..........2
10........3
11........4
12........5
13........>5

So for our N matches we will add one to the content of each index whenever that goal difference is encountered. This may be a little confusing so let?s look at an example.

Arsenal v West Ham

ARSENAL 2 -1 0 0 3 -2 1 1 1 5 1 0 0 -2
WEST HAM 0 0 -2 -3 -1 3 1 -1 -1 2 1 3 0 1

The above shows the goal differences for the last fourteen matches for Arsenal and West Ham, now let?s add these to our goal difference table:

INDEX GOAL DIFF ARSENAL WEST HAM
1..........>-5.......0..........0
2..........-5.........0..........0
3..........-4.........0..........0
4..........-3.........0..........1
5..........-2.........2..........1
6..........-1.........1..........3
7..........0..........4..........3
8..........1..........4..........3
9..........2..........1..........1
10........3..........1..........2
11........4..........0..........0
12........5..........1..........0
13........>5........0..........0

Now each home team array count is added to the opposite array count for the away side. So, the home teams? array index 13 is added to the away teams? array index 1, the home teams array index 12 is added to the away teams array index 2, etc. In our example this gives us;

INDEX GOAL DIFF COMBINED
1..........>-5.........0
2..........-5...........0
3..........-4...........0
4..........-3...........2
5..........-2...........3
6..........-1...........4
7..........0............7
8..........1............7
9..........2............2
10........3............2
11........4............0
12........5............1
13........>5..........0

The forecast can now be determined. If we assume that a draw is represented by array index 7 then array indexes 1 to 6 represent an away win, and array indexes 8 to 13 represent a home win. So, the home win counts are totalled and so are the away win counts. In our example this gives us;

AWAY WIN9
DRAW7
HOME WIN12

The total number of counts = 28
Therefore,
Away win possibility = 32%
Draw possibility = 25%
Home win possibility = 43%.

Now it?s your turn?

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Superiority method to your data. Or, if you?re lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. If this last option is for you then visit 1X2Monster where you can download a FREE copy of the Footyforecast 2.0 software which utilises all of the statistical methods described in this series of articles. You will also be able to download FREE weekly database updates for your software, how cool is that?

Here is a list of all the articles in this series?

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Rateform Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Footyforecast Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Win Draw Loss Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Simple Sequence Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Score Prediction Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Superiority Method

Malcolm Nossiter is the owner of 1x2monster.com and footyforecast.com. He has been providing hundreds of 1X2 tips every week since 1999. Please visit 1x2monster.com for a fountain of information on soccer betting.

Young Soccer Players And The Stages Of Learning

When a new skill is learned there are three stages of the development, the mental, practice and automatic stage.

Throughout these three stages your input into the learning cycle will differ according to the phase the player is in.

The Mental Stage

When a player first learns a new skill their key goal is to understand what to do to perform the technique correctly. They draw upon all of their awareness to search for information to map the correct technique.

It's more about internalizing "mentally" the physical technique of what's to be done. The mental map is made from previous activities, similar actions and looks, visual input as the player attempts to make neural connections so that their physical body can perform.

Coaching during the Mental Stage

Patience is the key. Some players will make the connections a lot quicker and will be able to perform the technique sooner than others.

Only key information should be given to the players at this stage as there is a tendency for player to become overwhelmed with information if they are given too much instruction.

Visual indicators are very important during this development phase, which is why we encourage you to demonstrate new techniques and skills.

The Practice Stage

The next phase of mastering a technique is to have a go.

There is some overlap with the mental stage here as the players will be having a go at the technique, but they will still be making mental connections as the neural paths start to give information too.

Refinement is the key here and so the more opportunities that the players have to execute the skill the better.

As players practice the errors they make should start to reduce over time as the sensory, visual and touch functions will start to give feedback to the players on how well they are performing the technique.

For example, when under 6's practice dribbling just keeping the ball close is a major battle, any adjustments they make can often lead to the ball being toe poked away even further!

But as the young players see the ball moving away from them, and make small jumpy movements to keep the ball under control, all of the feedback signals will be computing and assisting in their development.

Coaching in the Practice Stage

Observation, accurate feedback, encouragement and praise are all key skills during this phase.

Very young players will need more feedback whereas youth players should be able to self analyse their performance; some well structured questions can also assist.

The Automatic Stage

As practice continues so the players become far more proficient at the technique; this then frees up some mental capacity to take the learning even further.

This is why some techniques lend themselves to a chaining type coaching method, or when using a functional phase practice and build it through to extended play.

Players in the automatic stage know when they have made mistakes and also have the knowledge internally on how to put things right without much input from the coach.

However, complacency can creep in, so to can over-analyzing a technique which can be harmful to performance.

Coaching in the Automatic Stage

Rather than coaching specifics, the coaches duty now shifts to present more challenging situations to practice the technique and develop it into a full functioning skill.

Refinement is the key to develop truly magnificent players.

Claim your complimentary copy of the 'Soccer Coaching Guide' provided by Junior Soccer Coach and receive hints, tips and techniques to improve your team?s performance AND your expertise as a coach. Grab your copy now, visit the website today? The Junior Soccer Coach - Soccer Coaching Guide

Soccer Cleats - To Stud Or Not To Stud

Soccer boots, only correctly called cleats when they have the ground gripping teeth on the bottom of the shoe, have always been fodder for debate, among those who believe the screw in stud to be better than the molded teeth for traction or reliability. Many of the modern changes to soccer boots has come more from concerned parents, demanding the safest footwear for their young players, than it has from professional players, as might be believed.

There are basically three different types of soccer boots available, those being molded cleats, screw in studs, and these called 'astros' which are designed especially for use on astro turf. A good molded cleat is probably the best beginner boot, if play is to be on grass. They are easy to care for, and hitting them against each other or a wall will knock off most muddy, grassy build-up. Other than that, a rinse with warm water, and allowing them to thoroughly dry before wearing again will provide for about all the care these durable cleats will need.

If finances allow, it is wise to have two pairs of these soccer cleats for your young player, to insure one is thoroughly dry before re-wearing it. In the case of tournaments, where 3 or more games are played in a singe weekend, it is a great relief for those hard working feet to have fresh boots to put on. It is wise to note here that soccer slides, or sandals, are a very important item in the soccer bag. If the cleats are worn on hard surfaces for any length, the cleats will wear or break off much quicker than normal field use would cause.

When your player is ready to try screw in studs make certain they are fully prepared for the additional maintenance these boots will typically require. The simple cleaning of them is much the same as other molded boots, however, the screw in studs, or cleats, is where the care of these soccer boots makes a real difference in the performance they will afford the player.

The studs are available in plastic or metal, and it may be wise to determine which is allowed on your field, particularly if it is for youth play, prior to making your choice. It is possible that the sanctioning body at your playing fields may not allow screw in studs at all.

After you have made the decision to purchase soccer cleats with screw in studs, and have determined that the playing fields in your area do allow them, go to a sporting goods store that knows soccer, and has sales associates who will take the time to ensure your player gets a good, snug fit. This would be true even in the molded cleats, of course. Make certain the studs are screwed in tightly, and always carry extra studs in the soccer bag.

Inspecting the studs as the cleats are cleaned and put away after a match will prove wise, and help prevent a lost stud during a game. Never continue to play with a missing stud, it is harmful to the overall stability of the player, and can easily distort the hole so a new stud may not fit properly when replacing it is finally attempted. At first break in the game, replace the missing stud.

Astros are easy to care for, and can be used on grassy or hard surfaces. Basic cleaning is similar to the molded cleats.

Get all the latest in Soccer know how from the one and only true source at http://www.SoccerDetails.com. Be sure to check our soccer cleats page.