Run onto a football pitch and, no matter the gear that you’re wearing or the attitude you have, no one will have any idea what your ability level is. It is only once you’ve started kicking the ball that the opposition and your teammates will have more of a sense of what it is that you’re able to do.
Sometimes, that can be disastrous, with everyone realising that you’re not a good player. Other times, meanwhile, it can be a chance to show everyone that you’ve got game; particularly if you’re able to perform some top-level skills such as the ones that we’ve explained in more detail on this site.
About The Skill
Some football skills require hours and hours of practising in order to be able to pull them off. Others, meanwhile, might well be the kinds of things that you’ve ended up doing in the past quite naturally, without even realising that you were performing at such a high level. There is an extent to which the Pullback V fits into the latter category, having been invented by Ferenc Puskás in the 1950s but performed by players up and down the country on a regular basis. The first part of the move involves stopping the ball, then pushing it out with the same foot in the shape of a V.
This move is all about giving yourself space, moving away from an opponent into the rest of the pitch so as to be able to carry on dribbling with the ball or even find a pass to a teammate. Imagine a time on the field where you’re moving towards the left side of the pitch but notice plenty of space on the right. It might well be quite clunky to simply start running towards the right and dragging the ball with you, but the Pullback V is a move that allows you to stay in control of the football all whilst also giving yourself space away from the defensive players who are looking to get the ball off you.
In order to really be able to pull off this move, you also need to make use of your whole foot. The initial stopping manoeuvre uses the bottom of your foot, which is also how you will drag the ball back towards you. Then you will use the inside of your foot to push the ball out into space. If you want to send a long pass on to a teammate, you might even consider using the top of your foot in order to kick it a decent distance with control. The key thing to remember is the V shape, which is how the ball will move when you stop it in one place and then move it to another via the bottom of the ‘V’.