Friday, March 21, 2008

Intensity and instructions

I don't think I ever saw Yallop or any MLS coach do a finishing drill quite like this one. Usually players just line up to take shots. Sometimes they'll do a quick pass to the crosser and then run for the goal to shoot. But as one can see here, Ruud has an entire running sequence set up, and then the guy doing the drill has to repeat it. It's like trying to finish and do a shuttle run (anyone remember those?) at the same time. It looks exhausting.

Actually, as this clip starts, Alan Gordon has just run it twice. He did his little back and forth sequence, but the pass that came in was so bad, that Ruud was yelling, "Come on! He does all that running and that's what you give him? You've got to do better!" So Alan went one more time and appeared ready to keel over. David Beckham runs after Alan, then Carlos Ruiz starts, just as the video ends.

I didn't see who sent the bad pass. I turned to look when Ruud yelled, but I couldn't tell. I then switched the camera on to capture footage of the drill. Soon after, the Galaxy's press officer stopped by to inform all the reporters of the restrictions on asking David Beckham questions. If you couldn't understand the audio, basically, we couldn't ask anything about the English national team.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did things similar to that when I would summer in Germany with family when I was little.
They also did one where one of two people on either side of goal could pass you the ball while you stood blind and couldn't turn around until they blew the whistle which usually wasn't until it was about 5 feet from you; it teaches you to think fast needless to say as it could be a pass to your feet or your head. :)
Of course stuff like that is probably also why they have been in more World Cup finals and more semifinals than any other country. :)

The Hammer said...

Pushing yourself at the end of practice like that to the point where [even as a trained professional] you want to throw up will give you an edge in close matches. Being able to go an extra 5 minutes at 100% is the difference between coming up short, and getting a goal in the dying minutes.