Football (or soccer as it is known Canada, Samoa, the United States and Southern Africa[1]) is one of the most popular sports in the world. People love watching professional athletes kick the ball around. If you want to become a professional player, you need to have a love affair with the ball. This means constantly playing soccer or kicking the ball around by yourself. This passion and drive to play is the most important thing to become a professional. Understand what else it takes and expect challenges along the way.

TRAIN: There is no better way to become the best then training, so get to a football club and build up your condition! If you want to be a great defender, go work on your reflexes and tackling (especially your standing tackles). If you want to be a great midfielder, go train your dribbling and passes (especially the long passes and long free kicks). If you want to be a great attacker, go train your dribbling, (short) free kicks and shots on goal (ask some friends to be the defenders while you try to get around them.)

COPY: After some experience, go try copy the big players from tv. The art is not to be able to do their tricks, but to use them when it really comes to the line.

DOING THE UNEXPECTED: It may sound strange, but this is one of the biggest keys of winning. I mean with that, give passes to teammates which are so obvious that the defender wouldn't even notice, or sneak (by speaking) on a position the defenders wouldn't notice, and of course dribbling. Be the Best at Football (Soccer) Step 6.jpg6 FORESIGHT: The opposite, but even more important. Always watch the overall game. The positioning is very important here. You cannot rely on your teammates all the time, you see an uncovered attacker? Warn you teammates or cover him by yourself if it's possible. Remember, defenders will always get the blame if the opponents score a goal...

Running 3 miles every day is a great cardiovascular workout and will help keep you at your peak fitness. Run uphill as much as possible. At around 2 miles, find a steep hill and sprint up it for about 20-30 meters then turn round and walk back down. Repeat this 5 to ten times before finishing the run. If you do this every day you will find you can play at your best for longer because you'll be stronger and fitter.

1. Be motivated by what you want to achieve, not by what you want to avoid. Trying to move away from failure only brings us closer to it. We are drawn towards our dominant thoughts. If you take a penalty and think “Don’t scuff it” or “Don’t hit it wide”, you are simply creating pictures of it happening and programming your mind to achieve that negative goal. We are what we think about – think successful outcomes.

The late and great Gary Speed used to think one thing when he took a penalty. It was a question that he repeated to himself and answered only when he was just about to kick the ball – “Which way will I run, left or right, to celebrate having scored the goal?”