The key to soccer defense is staying goal-side of your opponent. "If you stay between the ball and the goal, if you can do that effectively, the other team has to pass off or make a bad shot," says Wes Harvey, former men's soccer team coach at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Once you have established your position, you need to add useful defensive moves. You can employ a tackle to attempt to gain possession of the ball, as active Salt Lake City midfielder Kyle Beckerman does by throwing his body to the ground in a slide tackle.
Slide Tackle
"The most dramatic defensive soccer move is the slide tackle of course, where you extend your reach by throwing your legs forward to win the ball," Harvey notes. Most people, when they think of tackles, think of NFL tackles, he adds, "but the term slide tackle does not intrinsically describe taking down the player on the other team." If there is any contact, it should be incidental. The object is to extend the reaching leg and poke away the ball, and any other contact may result in a foul.
Block Tackle
The block tackle, a more basic move, may be more useful to the average player. Coaches may prefer the block tackle in fact, as the slide tackle takes you off your feet, unable to react if your opponent maintains possession of the ball and races away. The block tackle is most effective if the defender comes directly toward the attacker, writes coach Alan Hargreaves in "Skills and Strategies for Coaching Soccer." The goal is to take a controlled swing, toes down as if doing a laces kick, at the ball at the attacker's feet, "as if to go through the ball rather than stop it," Hargreaves notes. The tackle should stop the attacker and ideally free the ball to have the defender gain possession.
Side Block Tackle
Rather than facing the attacker as in the block tackle, the defender comes running from behind or the side to make a side block tackle. He turns his hips and shoulders in toward the attacker and hooks his tackling foot around the ball, trying to get it to break clear of the attacker's foot. The ball may bounce backward between the attacker's legs so that the defender can scoop the ball up.
Expert Insight
A good defender tries to stay on her feet and use the block tackle first, with the slide tackle as a last resort, Hargreaves writes. Still, the slide tackle may be the only way to deprive a player of the ball if he has broken through the defense, so learning how to do a slide tackle is an essential skill. Players enjoy practicing the slide tackle, as it is "a spectacular and exciting achievement when executed successfully," Hargreaves notes. Direct your athletes to practice slide tackles on soft ground wearing protective clothing.
References
- Wes Harvey; Former Men's Soccer Coach, Morgan State University; Baltimore, Maryland
- "Skills and Strategies for Coaching Soccer"; Alan Hargreaves, et al.; 2010
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