Football Technique: Making a ball curve
How to bend it like Beckham?
Making a ball swing through the air is a great spectacle, and the aim of many young players. Making the ball swing is not such a hard skill, but making it swing and controlling it to go exactly where you want it to is a much harder skill.
a goalkeeper stretching for the ball To make it swing from right to left, a right-footed players approaches the ball at an angle to the direction they want to kick. Using the instep of the boot, the player strikes the bottom half of the right side of the ball. Conversely, if you want to swing the ball from to left to right, the right footed player uses the outside of the boot and strikes the ball in the bottom half of the left hand side.
The follow through is also very important. You need to follow through in the same direction as the player approached the ball, not in the direction of the ball.
The ball moves sideways as it travels because of a phenomenon known as Magnus force, which is caused by imbalances in the different pressures on the ball.
Related Pages
- Testing soccer skills
- Physics of soccer
- About the Magnus Force
- Coach of the Year Award - Ballon d'Or and FIFA
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