BEHIND THE PLAY #61

As someone who likely headed more soccer balls between 1984 and 1992 than 99.9% of the population of Canada, I write this from a position of frustration in what I see as the collapse of even the most basic tenets of winning aerial duels. So this is my attempt to resurrect the art.

Also, comments on a very interesting graph sent to me by a former coach at my club and BTP subscriber.

How to win a header

I did a lot of this in my time as a player. It pains me to see how far the craft has fallen, mainly in youth soccer but also amongst professionals. Part of it is the concern around concussions. I’ve read some of the studies and some, well one or two, are more convincing than others. I still think the evidence is tenuous at best. This concern though has led some parents to insist their child not have to head the ball. At all. Some clubs have responded to this concern by removing heading from their curriculum below U12.

Like all skills, learning proper technique, application in opposed, game-like scenarios and repetition is critical to successfully mastering heading. Through the process of learning proper technique when heading you’re also likely to reduce head injuries associated with it.

I’m not going to talk about specific techniques for heading though. I just want to cover approaches to winning more than your fair share of contested balls in the air. In the interest of brevity, let’s use bullet points.

• Having a good vertical is important but the ability to meet the ball at the highest point you can jump up to is an under-appreciated skill. It’s not hard at all to head a ball when you’ve only had to jump three inches off the ground but it’s like the Richter scale, it gets logarithmically more problematic the higher you go. If you’re vertical is 24” and you know you can consistently head a ball with some degree of power and direction at 22”, it’s clearly better than someone who has a 27” vertical but loses all ability in the air above 19”. Know your range and work to get better at heading near the high end of your jump. There’s a lot of bio-mechanical work to do to achieve this.

• Getting an early read on high balls, whether punted or kicked from the ground lets you pick a path to the ball quickly and, in the process, lets you establish position for that ball before your opponent.

• Understand that using your hands and arms on opponents if done properly can create a huge advantage but when done obviously and aggressively will make it easy for refs to call a foul against you. Think of your arms as shock absorbers, particularly if your opponent is trying to back into you. Absorb or push back to the degree it’s advantageous to you. You’re not likely to be called for this if your body language indicates that you are just responding to your opponent’s contact with you. If you’re in front of your opponent think of them (your hands) as an extra set of eyes. You want and will need the two eyes in your head to know where the ball is. Use your arms to reach back and feel where the opponent is, what direction they are moving and when. Adjust accordingly. It also helps you create a bit of space for yourself. (Note to centrebacks: when forwards do this to you, whack their arms off of you. Hard. You don’t need to make their job easier and yours harder by letting them feel where you are).

• Know when your job is not so much to get your head on the ball but simply to make sure your opponent doesn’t. This can take the form of realizing that if no one heads the ball it’s either going to go to someone on your team who has time to control it and play or that you’re giving up too much height and/or vertical to an opponent and your odds of out-jumping them are very low. Two techniques can help with this.

  • For the former, get a read on the ball and don’t let your opponent get to a position where they can head it. Jam them up under the ball by not letting them push you back to a better position for them that would let them jump and get to it. Force them to positions where the ball goes over both your heads and, for example, continues on safely to the arms of your keeper.

  • For the latter, jump early, with no intention other than to prevent the opponent from successfully jumping for the ball. Jump into their space early, initiating contact but not so much as to approach a foul. From this you push the problem down the road a bit by creating, hopefully, a 50-50 that one of your teammates wins.

• Know what suits your physical attributes. When I played I was pretty lightweight for a centreback. 6’ tall and 175lbs. What I lacked in upper body strength paid off in terms of having less weight to move upwards; so I had a pretty decent vertical. Did I want to jump in a crowd on attacking corner kicks at the near post? No. I wanted to start around the eighteen, count on my ability to read the flight of the ball and my vertical, and arrive late, with speed, to meet high balls played into spaces I could get to without feeling like I was in Costco at Christmas. A good example of that is the photo below of me, playing for UBC, getting to a ball from an attacking corner kick. No one marking me so I just had to jump with the keeper (who I believe is local legend Rob Merkl playing for SFU). Spoiler: I didn’t score.

• Know when you’re physically outmatched and adapt. This was forced upon me at the worst possible time. I was called up for the men’s national team for two games on Vancouver Island in 1992. The second game was against China in Victoria. Their striker was a solid 6’7” and I was tasked with marking him. Guess what teams do when they have a 6’7” striker? Yep. Everything was a long ball to him. I took to the challenge by cheating. I knew I was going to have very little luck jumping with him so I resorted, early and often, to clutch and grab tactics with the odd straight arm to hold him off if I managed to get position on him and wanted to keep him away from my airspace. It was working well. We were up 3-0 just before the half but he was getting pretty pissed off with both the score and my tactics. Just before half as I reached out again with my arm to create distance for an incoming challenge for a high ball, he’d had enough and grabbed my forearm with both hands and yanked it towards him. Twang. Dislocated shoulder and a trip to Victoria General to get it put back in.

Lastly, keep in mind that “winning” headers is not just getting your head to the ball first. It has to be purposeful. You need to either end up clearing the ball from a dangerous area near your goal, score/force a save or keep/regain possession. If you approach this with a full data set in your head it includes:

1. Reading the flight of the ball and plotting a path to get to it before your opponent.

2. Know how to use your body, without getting called for a foul, to maximize your chance of getting a head to the ball first

3. Meeting the ball at the earliest point you can.

4. Directing the ball progressively to your team’s advantage.

Seeing someone master all of this in a game is truly impressive and becoming rare.

What to make of this…

So players are actually playing fewer minutes, marginally, now than 20 odd years ago and in those games they are running less? Seems counter-intuitive given the concerns around players seemingly getting injured more and complaining of fatigue, burnout and mental health issues.

This of course is offset by the fact that within those minutes and distances there is more going on. Passing being up 30% in conjunction with sprints being up 80% strongly suggests that speed of play overall has increased, which taxes players physically and mentally.

It’s hard to say where injuries come from. Some are clearly through contact but many are likely repetitive strain, awkward movements, falls and fatigue-based movements that correlate with the huge increase in sprints that are expected now. After all, are you more likely to pull a hammy running at a trot or full speed?

My biggest concern is that stats like this may be leveraged to assuage concerns about players being asked to play as many games as they are now. The top players play the most games. They start and are likely to play 90 minutes for their club because they are among the best players on the team and needed. They make their national teams and so have that layer of games added which only increases if a national team has several top players on their roster as they are more likely to qualify and advance in international competitions; hence more games.

There are now major international competitions in three of four summers for most players. They are either in a World Cup, a confederation championship (Copa America, Euro, etc) or now the new Club World Cup. While sport science is lengthening the careers of players and helping them recover more quickly and fully, within that the governors of the game are undercutting those efforts through treating players like automatons with little respect for the need to rest and recover properly and fully.

Keep in mind that Pedri played 73 games in the 2021-22 season . He had not had a major injury in his career to that point. Since then he has had eight injuries that have kept him out of 75 games. Even young players have limits to what their bodies can take.

Next issue: June 2