When it comes to learning a wealth of different football skills, you need to make sure that you’re looking to use as much of your foot as you can. This is because using just one part of it is a waste of one of the best weapons that you have available to you as a footballer.
The sole roll is one of those skills that seems easy enough and an obvious one to turn to whilst you’re playing, but only if you have spent the requisite amount of time practising it to the point that it becomes second nature. For some players, the desperation to constantly use the side or top of their foot will leave them limited, so you need to make sure that that’s not you.
Dragging The Ball With The Underside Of Your Foot
In simple terms, the sole roll is a football skill that sees you use the underside of your foot in order to drag the ball in one direction or another. When you’re looking to practice this skill, the best thing that you can do is to drag it with the sole of one foot before controlling it with the instep of your other, perhaps doing a couple of the same moves before switching feet. This is especially worth doing if you consider yourself to be something of a one-footed player, on account of the fact that it will help you get better at being more able to use both feet. Rolling then passing, rolling then passing is a practice that will allow you to perfect the move.
View this post on Instagram
This is a skill that is essential to learn if you want to be able to escape pressure when put under it by an opponent. You also don’t need to worry too much about having to shield the ball, on account of the fact that you can perform it whilst having your body square on to the defensive player. If you really want to try to bamboozle your opposite number, you can look to add in a step over into the move between sole rolls. Developing such close control is a great way to ensure that you have enough skills in your locker to become all but impossible to defend against, given that you can move the ball wherever you want it whenever you want to.
One of the best practices that you can look to introduce to your routine is to set out a square in your practice area, then do the move from one side of the square to the other and then back again. You can do small moves, akin to what Lionel Messi would do, if you want to keep the ball close and away from a defensive player, or you can opt for much bigger moves, like Cristiano Ronaldo, if your choice is to push the ball away from the defender and into space in order to look to go faster. How you use your body is also important, wanting to shape it in such a way that it will trick the defender around what you’ll do next.