Are Ball Mastery Drills a Waste of Time? 

"Let's put the timer on the screen, Let's ignore it completely" 😂😂😂😂

They are never a waste of time. Your touch and ball control is one of the first things you have to do whenever you get on the ball. We are working everyday towards that ball mastery because we need to be able to think about the game without thinking about our touch and technique.

Ball mastery skills absolutely help! It develops muscle memory so that you don't have to look down at the ball during the game. At the end of my junior year soccer season, my high school coach told me that I was terrible and would never play in college. I did ball mastery skills for the entire next year. My touch and control on the ball improved drastically. When I returned the next year, he said, "What the heck happened to you!" I made all league and ended up being the only player in my class that played in college where I started all 4 years at center forward. I would also add that you don't see pros doing these because they did them when they were kids, so they could get to the professional level.

Pros have done those ball mastery drills when they were younger, and a part of them becoming pros is that coaches do not have to worry about these things whenever the players come up for training session. And, of course in the off season and a few times here and there they do these just to stay sharp or even get sharper. Also, incorporating game-like intensity and scenarios make the "boring" drills really meaningful.

Ball mastery drills helped me so much, I used to be very uncomfortable when the ball was on my feet and now it's like I'm one with the ball while everyone else around me struggles, it just gives you the cutting edge

I don’t think it is a waste of time at all. It gives you more confidence on the ball and it is a great workout to sweat and burn calories⚽️💪

I'm guessing no, but I'm interested to hear the details that you're going to give in this 9-minute Nuesday.

as while some ppl may look at it as a way to "show off" during a game, which can be true at times, it really helps the player instinctually, when they get put in situations where they arent able to consciously think about what to do next.

I think that doing ball mastery regularly can really help a player to develop a larger amount of simple skills that they can do instinctly and without thinking in games

I remember playing in college and during the off season coach wanted players to juggle a tennis ball. I always thought it wasn't bennificial to the game........ Until I realized who was the most successful at tennis ball juggling. It was our CDMs and CAMS and other players with solid first touches. It translates.

Those words are an understatement of Legendary Johan Cruijff Ball mastery is actually beneficial for individual technicality improvisation if your touch is not good enough,it's a way to get comfortable at the ball and unrealistic although it's also a platform that can't ignored if it's for an amateur player or semi professionals. I use it for getting comfortable and situation like tight spaces doesn't spiral upon me and keep that under pressure. I usually train on passing,1st touches directional,Crossing techniques,Shooting techniques, working on my speed twice a week,1v1s and ball mastery as well. Also playing small sided games when I am supposed to. I hope if any of you don't have blueprint,well you can take mine as a sample and create you own. AND duration of each is about 45mins to 1 hour Quality over quantity

Very simple analogy why it matters: It’s EXACTLY like learning a new instrument. If you’re learning eg the guitar, you need to practice A LOT on your technique, timing, scales, etc. That involves (endless) repetitive drills. Many pros who master their instrument will still do exercises, though much less (they already master the instrument) and will focus more on the process of making music. Finally, band members need to focus on improving playing together (and making music of course).

Sometimes i get really mad at how dumb these people are.. like how can Ball Mastery Drills be Waste of time if they help you to control ball better in tight spaces, skill moves and overall controlling the ball on the ground.. Btw liked the video matt.. kepp up the good work

The better touch & connection you have with the ball the better you will feel in complete control of the ball. Everything helps if you’re willing to put the time in. Working on sprinting & acceleration over short distances is the biggest thing footballers don’t do enough off.

100% insightful and logical breakdown as usual Matt. Thanks to your videos, I have lifted myself up to train ball-mastery more than ever in this year. My city had been locked down for some months, so training ball-mastery is also my best choice to improve. Last week, I went back to the field for a real game after months, and I performed significantly better. That's such a huge satisfaction and the motivation for me to keep working. I'm not a pro, but I can say that my experience is enough to prove the benefit of ball-mastery drills. One more thing ur righ about: I used to make excuses, like "these drills will not help at all" and didn't do them. Now looking back I see how stupid I was. Yah, it's pretty late for me to change, but late is better than nothing anw ^^ Thank u again Matt. Wish u everything best, God bless u for your good work and the positive vibes u share to people.

Ball mastry builds confidence on the ball when it's at your feet. With all surface areas of your foot. It improves your weight of touch with the ball and overall ball control.

“If ball mastery doesn’t affect you in a realistic game situation, then keep doing it.” Kelby And your time was horrible. Lol

In terms of individual training i think they’re pretty essential for anyone to get to a higher level. you need to improve your comfort on the ball to make everything instinctual so your focus can be on making decisions quickly

I always incorporate these sorts of drills in every session i do. It helps A LOT. Being a defender and needing to have good control to work space to get out of pressure, i credit my ball mastery training with my improved control. It gives me more confidence to dribble at opposition when i need to.

Well said. Thanks for the video, appreciate it.

You made an extremely great point. When I do ball mastery drills, I always make sure I pick my head so it'll teach me to dribble the ball and know my surroundings. That way, I can know exactly where my teammates and opponents are when I dribble in a real game.

Great explanation on this topic! I 100% agree! Well-rounded players need to have training in every aspect of the game. Thanks for sharing!

I do moves like ball mastery, juggling, zig zag cone drill to get better with the ball. I think it's very important to be involved with the ball.

Watching become elite during study hall = W

Great thanks for the challenges ❤️👍

You muscle Memory is key. Learning the Ball and the Muscles necessary to Control it , in the directions you mentally decide to place it. And Muscle Memory needed to React to the balls movement gaining control again. All this takes fast twitch muscle development and coordination. This makes ball control important

Ball mastery training is a MUST for any serious player. It's your resource when you are playing in a real match and when the situation arises, your body and mind just reacts and your opponent will be caught off balance or off guard.

Really interesting topic to discuss Matt. I think you have excellently answered any doubters of the benefits of ball mastery practices. Ball mastery is traditionally delivered to young players who are in the phase of technical learning. Developing a 'feel' for the ball in ball mastery practices is very game specific, like your Mo Salah example clip. Thanks for the video, great message for players and coaches.

Very well detailed 👏🏾

Fantastic answers, man. Great video.

Definitely not a waste of time. I play at a very high level and I did ball mastery every day for a month and I noticed a major difference in how I was playing and also how much confidence I had.

Amazing video have been doing lots of ball mastery drills lately and was playing a 4v4 and unconsciously did a Maradona spin pass very happy with results 😃

Doing 3 Ball mastery sessions a week has massively improved my performance on the pitch

Thanks Matt this info is gonna be real useful come my next training day.. 🙂👍

Love how you included salah's skill move and goal from the match last weekend. 😘

Novels are like big stories made up of smaller parts called chapters. Each chapter is made of smaller parts called paragraphs. Inside these paragraphs are sentences, which are made up of lots of words. And these words are just combinations of letters.

I was really ignoring it, very helpful video and u just added a new subscriber

I played 11v11 my entire life recently started playing 5v5 indoor and it’s people on top of people your tight space ball mastery drills have really help me get out of jams in games. Like the figure 8 drill has helped me drag the ball out the wall with 2v1 odds many time to get a pass off and take controll.

All Drills are good since these exercises improve your first touch!

100% agree! Quality video mate. 🙌⚽️

Another great video! 💪⚽️

The game is the best teacher to learn how to play and move in soccer, but ball mastery or foundation is best practice to develop the skills. ,like i read in a comment muscle memory, in any sport or in real life practice makes progress.. everything helps.. .

great video! thank you

Great video!!!

Excellent video Matt! You are going to be an incredible coach when that time comes.

Once you master a ball mastery routine You can do it with your eyes closed So when you play in a match You manipulate the ball easily without looking at it even

Very good video, well explained.

Guessing yes and no. If you do them all without implementing into a game, its useless. If you're doing them whilst implementing them they're good

Very nice video! I love the way you deconstruct the game. It helps me a lot with planning my own training. Especially the % time! Not mentioned here is that you can also focus on weaknesses. I have a left foot dribbling and shooting weakness, so I need to do those solo drills. My teammate has a problem with give and go. So pass -> move drills are good there.

Well said 👏

Ever seen a pro that didn’t have great control? I haven’t, the comfortable you are with the ball, the better player you’ll be overall. Love your videos! Keep up the great work!

TBH During The lockdown all I could do was individual training and these ball mastery drills, first touch, juggling all helped me get more comfortable on the ball. Now I do both the team training including 11v11 or small sided matches, official matches, passing and improve my defending skills, crossing etc. with those I also do ball mastery and one touch ,two touch. With these my game has improved so much so, yeah basically you just need to balance between individual and team training and you're good to go.😄

loved this

Thanks for the video! (Not sure if it’s just my headphones, but your slide transition ‘clicks’ sound like a beetle trying to burrow into my ear…)

You nailed it . There is nothing to add to it . Nice video 👍

Another very good video!!

Vert good video thenk you!

Well said...🙌

Hey Matt been supporting you a long long time 🙏🏻 was having my best season in a long time this year and Then I got Achilles tendinitis. Any advice for motivation during recovery?

Nice video🙏👊

Nice video🔥🔥🔥

Ball mastery are not a waste of time. Even Ronaldinho said that he did ball mastery to improve his relation with the ball and went on to become the greatest skiller of football of all time

100% agree. Great points and breakdown. Though I do feel I see too many young players focusing too much time on ball mastery itself. Would be interesting to survey a few 100-1000 players to see their time breakdowns

Well said

Nothin like seeming a notif that become elite uploaded

Yo Matt, love the video! I was wondering if you made varsity as a freshman in high school?

Very important for junior players especially players just starting out.

In my free time, I always do freestyle ball mastery and just passing the ball to a wall. It makes it less repetitive and makes me enjoy footy more. On a second note, I also get better at football in the technical aspects.

I never did any of this stuff and only through playing for fun and watching RU-vid videos I made it to division 1 soccer in America. The one thing that I wasn’t thought was to have a good diet and also a workout schedule and for that reason I did not make it professional

Love how you broke this down. They teach you to do the same with music. Break down complicated parts to smaller parts. Or even do another routine to help practice that difficult part of the song you’re trying to learn.

Reason why you dont see pros doing them is because these stuff are supposed to be learned in the academy

When I first started out as a coach, like a lot of coaches, viewed individual skills like juggling a ball etc etc with less conviction as team play, running ability etc. I thought “If I wanted jugglers, I could go to a circus”. Over the years though, I came to realise that ALL the very best players in the world can juggle a ball fantastically well. Not only that, they took less time to control a ball at speed which gave them more time to decide what to do immediately. Ajax FC in the 1980s, had a program where they invited ONLY the best 24 young strikers from around Europe, and of these only the best were retained as strikers with the remainder becoming midfielders, backs and centre backs, the only exception being the GK. The reasoning was that ALL PLAYERS could in theory, could score and didn’t have to waste time learning individual touch skills.

I live in Indy and went to the Indy 11 game to see you play, Matt! Where were you?! Doh!

Hello! Gotta New idea for 2 min Tuesday😀. Which Material type is better for training Football for eg. PU or PVC.

LOOOOOOOOOOOVE THESE

i train panna for 1 and a half hours a day and a lot of my session is made up of ball mastery training and it has honestly made me a lot more confident with the ball at my feet when i play in a 11v11 matches

Ball mastery I find helps more with confidence and quick feet knowing and what to do instinctively in tight situations under pressure I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used some ball mastery skill in games to create time and space or beat a player. You won’t use it as much in 11 aside matches where it’s more about passing technique and touch but it will help on occasions. But the thing is football is a lot of aspects and strengthening only one aspect is only gonna get you to a certain point and you’ll hit a wall you have to push your comfortably everytime ve been doing drills and skills for years now I’m 38 with kids and wife I still play competitive football at semi pro level. I find the best thing for me that totally Changed my game was confidence no matter the situation or team I was facing I always treated it like I was just playing a small sided futsal match where I just expressed myself

It is stupid asf Train alone , open imagination. Sleep well, your brain will memorise everything and store it in your subconscious. So you will use the trucks unintentionally when needed

My opinion there not a waste of time forsure, not game realistic but ask yourself this; how many times are you gonna touch the ball in a game? You always want to be mentally prepared I think because 90 minutes is all mental and gotta be locked in. So whatever you do outside the pitch with the ball it’s never a waste of time. That’s why we work to get better on the ball and when it’s crunch time we have the ability to make a great touch or something. Again it’s my view on it!!

Ball Mastery is heaps good especially if you are in a tight space and you have no option to pass.

I agree 10000 percent I always have team training then these type of drills which are more individual I do on my own time once a day or do another short sided pick up.

Well done Matt 👏

A perfect example of this is heung min son he use to do kicks ups for 4 hours and just 2 touch passing and he has one of the best weak foot in world football

How would they not help? It's the main skill of the sport. Even a defender, pulling it back and switching it is the most important skill they can have on the ball, that becomes second nature from ball mastery skills. Don't even get me started on a mids control or a forwards touch. I personally do a random mastery video for 10 mins everyday. So there is no patten, it's just working on my dribbling. The simple ones are the best, you just try and get quicker, more controlled, and keeping your head up. Nothing compares to real game play, obviously. some players are scared of the ball, don't tell me they are getting better playing like that, though.

Matt please a two minute vid on how to check your shoulders with purpose

Personally for me I've been doing a lot of ball mastery , juggling etc unrealistic game drills . Solely because I'm not having team trainings , not until today atleast finally managed to get back into team trainings & see how it goes 💪🏽⚽️ Thanks for the video though, great way to start my morning

In my opinion , it is very useful in my matches without even knowing that I'm doing..😁

Any time you have the ball at your feet, there will be something happening. What is that something? It’s about developing a relationship with the ball. Much like a relationship with a person, it takes time. The more time you spend with it, the more you get to know it, the more comfortable you get around it. The more you get around it and know more about it, the more you know about yourself. Discovery, comfort zones, etc! The further away you get from the game (no pressure, no opponents, no time/space constraints) the less relevant. The more relevant you make it, the more impactful it becomes. Having the ball at your feet isn’t necessarily a bad thing. How you spend that time with the ball will determine how impactful it’ll be.

Game realistic training by pretty much doing 11v11 has been the death knell of having confidence shooting in games. Imagine a sniper who practiced shooting in proportion to the amount of time it takes to get into the proper position, how to wait with patience for hours at a time. So he would be excellent at hiding and sneaking and waiting, but when he shoots will he be able to hit the target if he has spent a fraction of one percent shooting? Practicing shooting in game -like situations for a forward more often than it occurs in an actual 11v11 game is essential to being a good finisher. Likewise, being on the other end of that, being a defender chasing down a break away and a keeper defending is essential, for these are "mission critical" skills. Anyway, as a coach, I see kids who simply do not know what to do with the ball in front of a goal as they freeze up in anticipation of trying to succeed in an unfamiliar, high-pressure situation. The best finisher feels like he has done it thousands of times and the finish is almost routine. Also, I have noticed in my own play that the more little skills I have when I play, the more I can automatically string together a bunch of skills into doing something extraordinary and unplanned. It looks like it was off the cuff, but in reality it combined a number of skills that I did not even have to think about to use. They just felt right, and the ability to execute was there because it had been developed with lots and lots of practice. That said, you cannot just do ball skill training. Too often though, people seem to forget that you not only can but must have a mixed strategy to training. You do not do ball mastery or game realistic training. You do both! And you train in other ways at all. The so-called scientific only people make this mistake. Usually studies are done comparing one strategy to another but do not compare mixed strategies in different proportions. So, generally, the "scientific" person will fall on one-side or another but the better educated person who understands the limitations of a particular study will use the study as a guide but not necessarily an answer to questions that were not asked in the study (like what if we train both ways?).

When I started focusing on ball mastery was when I started consistently winning my 50/50’s.

Amazing.

Is there a link for purchase. I tried to purchase from one and my bank keeps dealing it

Matt, since you rated the training with games(11v11 small sided etc) as the best and unrealistic and more technique based as lowest. What do you think is a better session, play 11v11 or small sided games with low quality players (play with amateurs or younger players) vs just training in your own but aren't game realistic (ball mastery, juggling etc)???

I agree with you... They will improve your technical quality on the ball for sure... But... I would like to add one more argument to your already good video about this... Another big criticism or complain about ball mastery drills is that it'll make you robotic and predictable... Which I guess is true to some extent... But even I don't agree with this completely... While it is true that mastering a perticular skill and being able to apply them effectively in game situations are completely different... I don't think they are mutually exclusive... I believe that if you have the imagination and visualisation in your head, the skill you have mastered will automatically tranfer to application in games... And I like to combine freestyle dribbling with the realistic parts added as part of ball mastery drills to improve in game requirements like vision, visualisation, imagination, getting your head up, shoulder checking etc. Combine this with ball mastery drills and you'll see a lot of improvement going ahead and it'll completely remove the predictable and robotic part that the ball mastery drills add to your game! Also... Consider this... It is not what skill you do and whether you do the same skills repeatedly in a game that matters... It is how well you execute it and when you choose to do it that matters... Timing and execution matters a lot for a skill to be effective... Think about it... Everyone who watches Messi play knows he is going to use feints and everyone who saw Robben play knew he was gonna cut inside.... But they were still unstoppable... Why? coz they knew how to execute the the skill and their timing of the skill was legendary.... Combine that with their ball control and quick feet, agility and balance they were unstoppable...

You are too right

Ball Mastery is the first thing a new or youth player should focus on. It will help them improve their dribbling and first touch faster than anything else. Once they have mastered the ball, they can focus on other things. There are other parts of the game, that just won’t matter in a real game, if their first touch isn’t good enough. The other thing, team training doesn’t do that much to improve that refined touch on the ball. Individual training on something very technical and challenging is where the most skill improvement takes place.

This is not an opinion based topic. It's neuroscience... Drills involve 3 main factors: Mechanical Memory, Long Term Memory and Propioperception. The mechanisms goes as follows: Mechanical Memory is the repetition of the information to be memorized. Firstly, there's no "Ball control" or "drill" in our conduct repertoit, by repeting the drills or variables involving the experience of repeating the same thing, synaptic associations appear and your brain is able to "recollect" the needed information automatically. For this to occur, greately complex drills are not needed, just repeated paterns of movement that can articulate together. Your brain, given the context, will recollect this information without your "concent" and you will be able to access it unconsciously. If this wasn't the case, building a Rubik's cube in 4 seconds wouldn't be possible. My PB was 9 seconds, you need to repeat... repeat... repeat... patterns arise, your brain solves them without hesitation. You also need to memorize 21 cases to solve the last layer colors + 57 to move the yellow pieces to the top. At some point you reach the point where it is not necessary to be aware of "what happens when". It just happens, the immediate variables in soccer are your feet, your position in reference to the other and the ball. The solutions are the repertoire of behaviors that you mechanized to solve the information given by sensory perception towards a specific goal. Remember, greatest midfielders score higher in IQ scores. This is not in "general", it is towards a specific factor: "Perceptual Reasoning". The ability to do exactly what I just described.

This is probably my favorite series on RU-vid

3:21 I have to say... for anyone that doesn't play AND practice on at least a semi-regular basis on the same kinds of pitches (at the very least watered pitches), these kinds of touches are complete murder for your game. I can't tell you how many times I've practiced certain close-control patterns (I'm an amateur player obviously) in our home arena, and then suddenly find myself on another pitch that feels completely different and either is or isn't watered/wet, and it's just completely different. Takes a huge amount of time to adjust. For non-professionals, I really don't think it gets mentioned enough just how much that difference actually matters. The ball behaves so differently on watered pitches that you'll spot right away those who aren't used to it. Long-balls coming their way for instance? They position themselves in completely the wrong way expecting the ball to bounce a certain way, and instead the ball flies right under their foot or hits their crotch/face as they're about to try and catch it on their first touch. It's maddening for someone like me, lol.

two touch? thats one of the best things you can do at training!