Eating the wrong thing can affect your performance quite dramatically. Make sure you consume carbohydrate-rich meals two to three days prior to upcoming matches

food pyramid

It is recommended to stay away from fried, fatty or spicy foods within 24 hours of kick-off. To empty out the stomach and upper small intestine, your pre-game meal should be at least 3-4 hours before the match. From that point on, stick to liquids. Make sure you are well hydrated and drink plenty of fluids before, after and (when possible) during the game.

Throughout the rest of the week, you may eat protein (meats) but try to keep it low-fat. The basic idea is to have your body store its calories from complex carbohydrate foods. Players burn approximately 1700 calories per game while the body can only store about 600 per day.

Here are some examples of low-fat, high-carb foods that you may consider:

Breakfast & Snacks
non-sugar coated cereal
cold or hot cereals (oatmeal)
soy or low-fat milk
English muffins
pancakes
French toast
potatoes
yogurt
bagels
juices
fresh or dried fruit
corn
pretzels
low-fat cottage cheese
graham crackers
egg whites

Lunch & Dinner
fish (seafood)
veal
chicken (without the skin)
turkey
other lean meats (not fried)
rice
vegetables
pasta (marinara sauce)
variety of breads (multi-grain)
soups (broths are best with a little onion)
salads (low-fat to non-fat dressings)
sodas (can assist with Glycogen recovery after games)
pizza with vegetable toppings (mushrooms, green peppers)

Follow Expert Football

Mastering the art of passing is a must if you want to perform well as a soccer player. Without good passing skills your time on the field will be short.

Passing is so simple but still so difficult. It may look simple when professional players find each other with long and precise passes, but these players have spent thousands of hours on a soccer field practicing passing.

Playing Simple

You should always try to pass the ball simple. With simple I mean that passing the ball to a nearby standing teammate should always be your first option. Make sure that you don’t pass the ball if they are marked by an opponent.

Of course you will get credit from teammates when you find them with 40 yard passes, but always try to pass the ball to your nearest teammate.

Stay Focused and Calm

Providing your teammates with quality passing, especially when you are under pressure, is also a moment where you need to be calm and try to find an easy solution.

In order to become good at passing, you also need to become familiar with the different type of passes, and the various ways in which they are used.

Push Pass

In soccer, the most frequently used pass is the push pass. This pass is easy to learn and you will know how to perform a push pass correctly just after few training sessions, but to master it you will need to practice a lot more.

Wall Pass

ư

The wall pass, also known as the give and go and one two pass, is a tactic that many sports use. In fact, the wall pass is the most basic one of all offensive tactics but is still very effective when used in the right situations.

Chip Pass

The chip pass is performed by a jabbing motion down and under the ball to get it up into the air. With a chip pass the ball will get a backspin which will slow down the speed of the ball when it lands on the ground.

Backward Pass

The backward pass in soccer is very efficient when you have the opponent’s goal behind you. This type of pass is performed by kicking the ball with the heel or the sole of your kicking foot.

Passing into Space

Passing into space is used frequently when the game is played at high speed. The player without the ball must provide a passing option for the ball holder by running into space. If you are the ball carrier, you must look around you and keep an eye on movement and runs by your teammates.

Follow Soccer Training Guide

In many countries the term local derby, or simply just derby means a sporting fixture between two, generally local, rivals, particularly in soccer. In North America, “crosstown rivalry” is a more common term.

Origins of “derby”

The phrase most likely originated from The Derby, a horse race in England, founded by the 12th Earl of Derby in 1780, since at least as early as 1840 ‘derby’ has been used as a noun in English to denote any kind of sporting contest. A local derby is just a sporting contest between local rivals. It may be that the Earl, or his ancestors, are responsible for lending their titled name to sporting events, giving rise to the ‘derby’ match.

Another widely reported theory, though not accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary, is that the phrase came about from the county of Derbyshire itself. The traditional Shrovetide football match is commonplace in the town of Ashbourne, Derbyshire. It was renowned as a chaotic and exuberant game that involved the whole town and often resulted in fatalities. The goals were at Nuns Mill in the north and the Gallows Balk in the south of the town, and much of the action took place in the Derwent river or Markeaton brook. Nominally the players came from All Saints’ and St Peter’s parishes, but in practice the game was a free-for-all with as many as 1,000 players. A Frenchman who observed the match in 1829 wrote in horror, ‘if Englishmen call this play, it would be impossible to say what they call fighting’. Though this has been refuted by the Oxford dictionary and hailed as “nothing apart from local folklore … after all, the phrase isn’t ‘a local Ashbourne’.

Early uses of the phrase referred to football (soccer) matches and the first printed citation appears to be the Daily Express, October 1914: “A local Derby between Liverpool and Everton”.

A hat trick in soccer is the term used when a player scores three goals in a single game. Goals scored during a penalty shootout do not count towards the total.

When a soccer player scores a hat trick, he or she is traditionally given the match ball after the game. If a player scores one goal with his left foot, one with his right foot, and one with his head, it is sometimes called a “perfect hat trick.”

Origins of “hat-trick”

Many North Americans associate the term “hat trick” with ice hockey (when a player scores three goals in a game, the fans throw their hats onto the ice). The origins of the phrase, however, come from cricket.

The first use of “hat trick” in cricket dates from 1858, when a player called H.H. Stephenson of the All-England XI took three wickets (dismissed three players) in three consecutive bowls of the ball. The first recorded use of “hat trick” in ice hockey dates back to the 1940s.

Fastest Soccer Hat Trick

Incredibly, the world record for the fastest soccer hat trick is 90 seconds! According to the Guinness World Records website, Tommy Ross scored three goals in 90 seconds for Ross County against Nairn County in Scotland on November 28, 1964. Now that’s a tough record to beat…

World Cup Hat Tricks

In the 19 World Cup tournaments since 1930, only 49 hat tricks have been scored (in more than 700 games).

The first ever World Cup hat trick was scored by an American. The player, Bert Patenaude, scored three goals in a game between the USA and Paraguay in the 1930 World Cup.

English striker Geoff Hurst is the only player to have scored a hat trick in a World Cup final. He scored three goals in the 1966 final between England and West Germany (two of his goals came in extra time).

Follow Youth Soccer Boot Camp

The contemporary history of the world’s favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed – becoming the sport’s first governing body.

The contemporary history of the world’s favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed – becoming the sport’s first governing body.

Both codes stemmed from a common root and both have a long and intricately branched ancestral tree. A search down the centuries reveals at least half a dozen different games, varying to different degrees, and to which the historical development of football has been traced back. Whether this can be justified in some instances is disputable. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people have enjoyed kicking a ball about for thousands of years and there is absolutely no reason to consider it an aberration of the more ‘natural’ form of playing a ball with the hands.

On the contrary, apart from the need to employ the legs and feet in tough tussles for the ball, often without any laws for protection, it was recognised right at the outset that the art of controlling the ball with the feet was not easy and, as such, required no small measure of skill. The very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from a military manual dating back to the second and third centuries BC in China.

This Han Dynasty forebear of football was called Tsu’ Chu and it consisted of kicking a leather ball filled with feathers and hair through an opening, measuring only 30-40cm in width, into a small net fixed onto long bamboo canes. According to one variation of this exercise, the player was not permitted to aim at his target unimpeded, but had to use his feet, chest, back and shoulders while trying to withstand the attacks of his opponents. Use of the hands was not permitted.

Another form of the game, also originating from the Far East, was the Japanese Kemari, which began some 500-600 years later and is still played today. This is a sport lacking the competitive element of Tsu’ Chu with no struggle for possession involved. Standing in a circle, the players had to pass the ball to each other, in a relatively small space, trying not to let it touch the ground.

The Greek ‘Episkyros’ – of which few concrete details survive – was much livelier, as was the Roman ‘Harpastum’. The latter was played out with a smaller ball by two teams on a rectangular field marked by boundary lines and a centre line. The objective was to get the ball over the opposition’s boundary lines and as players passed it between themselves, trickery was the order of the day. The game remained popular for 700-800 years, but, although the Romans took it to Britain with them, the use of feet was so small as to scarcely be of consequence.

According to FIFA