Elsewhere on this site, you can learn about the fake shot, as perfected by French player Thierry Henry, and the fake pass, but they aren’t the only ‘fake’ things that you can do on the football pitch. In fact, there are numerous other options open to you to try to trick the opposition in order to make things easier for you to do what you want with the football, which is where the ‘fake turn’ comes in.
It is a move that is very much worth learning how to perfect, should you want to have as many strings in your bow as possible before you head out onto the football pitch and end up facing real players, who are there to make your life difficult.
Convince The Opposition You Are Going One Way Then Go The Other
In essence, this trick is very similar to the other ‘fakes’ that you’ve learned, performed in order to trick the opponents into thinking that you’re going to do one thing before you do something else entirely. This is a fun trick to pull out of the bag when you’re heading in one direction and being pursued by members of the opposition, sending them in one direction whilst you head off in another one.
In some ways, it bears some similarities to the Cruyff Turn that we’ve told you about elsewhere, so if you’ve spent time practising that then you can add some of the flair from that into this move in order to ensure that you mix things up a bit.
What you want to do is to use your touch to push the ball in one direction, making it seem as though that is the direction that you intend to run in. Then, once the defenders have started to move that way, you can bring the ball back and push it in entirely the other direction. That move will confound most opposition players, presenting you with enough time and space to be able to do whatever you need to do from that point on.
That is to say, once you’re in the space, you can look around to see whether the next thing you need to do is look for a pass to a teammate, put a cross into the box or even get a shot off if you fancy.
There is another version of the fake turn that doesn’t involve the ball at all. Instead, the ball remains entirely unmoved as you simply use your body to feint turning one way before going back to your original position, gathering the ball up and carrying out your next move from there. Of course, that is a significantly more risky move to try to pull off because if your opponent doesn’t fall for it, then they’re well placed to be able to just take the ball off you and move away. You need to both convince them that you’re going to turn with your body language whilst also being prepared to have to regain possession if they have stolen the ball.