Football isn’t a complicated game, but it is one that you can make as simple or as tricky as you want. One of the ways that you can add a complication to the discussion is by learning a few skills that will show your mates up in the park, which is why this part of the site is dedicated to just that. From the nutmeg to the Cruyff Turn, there are more than a few things that you can learn the bare basics of here.
If ‘La Croqueta’ sounds like a delicious Spanish dish to you, that’s because it sort of is. Little wonder, then, that it is Spanish midfielder Andrés Iniesta who is widely credited with having perfected it.
What is It?
Clément Bucco-Lechat, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Andrés Iniesta is widely considered to be one of the best midfielders ever to play the game, spending the majority of his career at Barcelona. He ended his time on the pitch having won almost every trophy that there was to win on both the domestic and the international stage, whilst also coming up with moves that other players could only look to emulate.
La Croqueta is the one that is most commonly associated with him, mainly because he did it regularly throughout his career. Not that he was only in doing it, of course, given the fact that everyone from Lionel Messi to Michael Laudrup also used it.
In essence, it is a clever dribbling move that makes it appear as if the ball is attached to the player carrying out the move by an elastic band. It is made up of two little kicks carried out with the inside of the boot, shifting the ball from one foot to the other and then back again. The initial part sees you move the ball with the foot, seeing the foot move along part of the way. At the same time, you do a little jump in order to add some movement and energy into the skill, whilst also confusing your opposition number when it comes to working out what it is that you’re actually going to do next.
Once the ball has made it over to your other foot, you then knock it back the way it came with a sliding motion, moving the original foot out of the way so that you don’t end up tackling yourself. This is one of those skills that looks reasonably simple, but that you will need to put a huge amount of practice into in order to ensure that you can pull it off in the pressure cooker environment of a match. Do that, though, and you will not only earn yourself a bit of a space on the pitch but also the respect and admiration of all of the people that you’re playing the match alongside.