How to Analyze Your Game as a Soccer Player

How to Analyze Your Game as a Soccer Player:

Do you believe you can improve your game while you’re sitting on your couch?

Do you believe you can improve your game when you’re injured or sick?

You might think that the only way to make it as a pro is to train 6 hours per day, 6 days per week..

But I’m here to tell you, that’s not exactly how it goes…

Believe it or not, you can always improve your game! Even if you’re sick, injured or you just feel burnt out….

 

Work Smarter, Not Harder:

It’s not fun to be sick, injured or sitting on the couch. The best thing is to be on the pitch playing with your teammates enjoying the beautiful game.

But, life happens. You will get sick, you will get injured. That’s just the nature of the highs and lows of life.

With that being said, it’s very valuable to be able to find things to improve your game without having to get into your yang energy (physically taxing your body).

If you find ways to improve your game without having to give physical effort, you will have the ability to work smarter.

Your goal should always be to work smarter, not just harder!

Working hard is very important. It is easily the number one hack to be successful at anything in life.

But, working smart and hard is much better than just working hard!

With that being said, one of the number one things you can do to improve your overall game as a footballer is through Game Analysis.

What is Game Analysis?

 The process of honestly looking at your game and being completely straight up with yourself.

It’s basically taking a look in the mirror and taking accountability for all your actions and decisions on the pitch.

The more honest you are in your analysis, the more value you will gain from it and the better of a footballer you will become because of it.

 Why is it so good?

It’s simple. Video doesn’t lie!

Your game is the biggest test every week to see how well prepared you are and to see how well you’ve prepared (during the training week).

If you’ve prepared well during the week, you will most likely perform well in your match.

Which is a major reason why I always emphasize that you need to be the best player and hardest worker in your team trainings.

 

Game Analysis:

 How to Do It & When to Do It:

First thing’s first; lets establish that game analysis doesn’t need to be done directly after the game.

Some people like to let the game and their mind chill after the game, and that’s totally fine.

Just like with diet, sleep and extra training, you need to find what works best for you.

Everyone has a different style and different way they do things. The most important thing is that you need to find a way to analyze your game that you can be consistent with.

When you base it on your preference and the type of person you are, you will be consistent with it, and that’s what matters most!

If you like to let the game sit & “marinate” for 1-2 days before going back and re-watching it, do that.

If you’re a bit crazy (like myself); you can re-watch the game immediately after you play while you’re doing some recovery work.

 

How I Like to Analyze My Game:

Personally, I like to draw myself a hot bath with Epsom salt and relaxing music, put my laptop on a chair (maybe a bit of wine ;)) and re-watch the game.

I place my laptop on a chair, soak in the hot bath, watch the game, enjoy it a bit, and as I see myself involved in an action or a play, I will pull out my phone and write the time that the play happened in the “notes app” on my iPhone.

Within the note, I will be as descriptive as possible and include what type of action it was.

I will also include if it was a positive or negative action.

For example:

Minute 5:30– Positive Action: Excellent turn out of pressure and ball into space for the winger.”

Minute 11:20– Negative Action: I should have checked my shoulder more times and played the ball to the other side, changing the attack.”

Based on that small analysis, I determine what I need to work on during the training week..

Example:

What to work on during training this week:

Based on Analysis:

I didn’t check my shoulder enough and I didn’t switch the play enough.

What I Need to Work On:

Checking my shoulder multiple times before receiving the ball and work on changing the point of attack.

Practical Actions:

-Work with my center back or fullback and have him spray in 10-15 balls to me.

When the ball is coming in, check shoulder multiple times, and work to play the ball to the other side of the pitch (to a teammate or to mini goals).

“Cool Ric, but how can I analyze my game?!”

You know I got you!

Let’s get more specific as to what you can do right away. 

As we always talk about, there is no use just reading articles. You must follow up that reading, watching or listening with practical action.

 Without that practical action, you will never see improvement.

You think you’re going to get stronger at pushups by reading about pushups?

Or does it take you actually doing it to see improvement?

8 Steps to Analyze Your Games as a Soccer Player:

1.Video

-If you have the privilege to have your game on video, this is for you. If not, I will show you a technique (later in the article) that you can do with a notebook and a pen that will help you.

-Sit down (in the bath or on the couch with a cup of coffee or tea) and watch half by half.

-Since you have the game on video, you can rewind, move forward, etc.

2.From here, take every single one of your actions and write the exact minute and second these actions occur.

3. After you watch the full macro game and have a feel of your macro performance, go back to the exact time your action occurs (by the minute and second).

4. Look over the video and ask yourself, “was this the right action?”

-Could you have done better, was there a better decision that could have been made?

5.If it was a good action, do 3 things:

-First, commend yourself for it and make sure you are aware to continue doing it during the week’s team trainings and games.

-If it was a good action based off a specific technical action, (for example, excellent right foot diagonal ball), make sure to continue to work on that during the training week.

For example: one of my biggest strengths is my diagonal balls. But I continue to work on it at least 3x per week after team training.

-Everyone always talks about working on your weaknesses, but as you get higher and higher “up the football ladder,” I believe it’s more important to work on your strengths and make them standout abilities.

-Of course, it’s very important to brush up and work on your weaknesses, but don’t forget to make your strengths standout abilities.

-Second thing:

-Do something for yourself that will help you in the future for your “highlight tapes.” 

 -Take a screen recording using “Command, Shift, 5” and screen record the action (only for Mac, not sure about other computers, sorry ;))

-Proceed by naming the action:

-For example: “good diagonal ball into Richie,” then put it in a folder that you have named “highlight edit.”

In that folder, write the date of the match and who you played against.

This way, you can go back when it’s time to make your highlight video and possibly use that clip.

 6.If it was a poor action:

-Review the clip and see what you could have done better (note it down).

–If it was a technical mistake (for example, if you didn’t take the ball out of the air properly with your chest):

Make sure to work on that during the training week.

–If it was a tactical/positional mistake (for example, getting too close to the center back to receive the ball instead of receiving the ball higher up the pitch through the lines):

Make sure to be aware of that during the training week when you play bigger matches and try to implement that knowledge during the next game and during the training week.

7. All in all, based off of your actions during the game, you can create an individual training plan for yourself for the week.

-Based off your analysis:

What did you do well?

What do you need to work on?

Here is What You Need to Do If You Don’t Have Access to Your Game Film:

Some of you don’t have access to your video…

It’s unfortunate and it would be better to have the video, but the goal is to adapt and make the most of what you have!

Instead of complaining and feeling sorry for yourself, ask yourself, “what is the next best thing I can do?”

8. If you don’t have access to video, sit down with a pen and paper or on your computer and you do something similar (to what we talked about above)…

-Ask yourself “What did I do well? What did you do poorly?”

-Once again, note it down, and based off that:

-Write down what you need to work on during the training week to make sure you perform better the next game.

All in all, the main goal of game analysis is to honestly look at yourself (to see what you did well and what you did poorly) and use what you’ve analyzed in your analysis to perform better in the next game than you did in the previous game.

 

How to Be the Best Footballer Possible:

 Consistency in matches and performances.

The hardest thing as a footballer is to be consistent, and if you can be consistent with your performances while slowly incrementally improving game by game, the sky is the limit for you as a footballer.

All in all, I am absolutely positive that if you start properly analyzing your game as a soccer player, you will take your game to new levels!

I hope this article helped you.

As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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