Developing soccer skills: turning

A turn can punish the opponent for making that sort of anticipatory defensive action: I am looking towards one side, but I’m turning towards the other side. Now the opposition has shifted over in anticipation towards the side I was looking towards, but now I’m going somewhere else, into space, and perhaps also have open team-mates ahead of me.

So a turning action in an attacking context is very often a surprising action that opens the game up. Very often, successful attacks on a team level start with a surprising turn by a player on the ball.

It is very much an initiating action towards creating more dynamic moments. So it is crucial for us to encourage our players, especially in the opposition half and in the attacking third, to make turns because they are ways to open up the game and create dynamic moments with a lot of promise. 

But it’s also technically not an easy action to execute.

SCW: Is it natural for players to have one or two standard turns in their locker, that lend themselves to how they move their body and how they move with the ball?

MK: Absolutely. At any level of the game, this is what most, if not all, players are doing.

Look at Lionel Messi as an example. He doesn’t perform 25 different types of turns. He has got a few standard techniques. 

The genius of a football action is using the correct action in the right position, at the right moment, in the right direction and at the right speed.

Performing the turn in the moment where it’s appropriate, and at the right speed, is ultimately the key. It needs to be a solution to a footballing problem.

That’s where, in terms of basic technique, not having a large number of various turns you do is fine, as long as you are applying your technical solutions to the moments where it is appropriate.

SCW: Is there value in unopposed practices for turning?

MK: Absolutely. I’m not a fan of this dogmatic approach of ’opposed practice is everything, unopposed practice is bad’. 

The starting point should be our team and our players. If we, as coaches, feel an unopposed practice for something like turning is the way to teach our players, then we have considered the needs of our players as our starting point. I have absolutely nothing against that.

It could be done at the beginning of a session, it could be done in a recovery session at a higher level. I absolutely don’t mind that at all.

SCW: How important are players off the ball when a player is turning?

MK: I think the most crucial thing is to move away from the player who is turning, because if you remain close to them you are attracting more opposition pressure, and could be clogging the space. The player is then more likely to turn into pressure.

"Performing the turn in the moment where it’s most appropriate is ultimate the key..."

If I am moving away from the turning player, I might also force the opponent to mark me and move away at the same time. I’m thereby creating space for that player to turn to gather speed and make the situation more dynamic. If the situation is more dynamic, it’s more likely to be in favour of the attacking team.

Obviously, communication of where opponent pressure is coming from can be very good. If I hear ‘right shoulder’, I know there is an opponent on my right shoulder and I can turn around on my left shoulder.Or if I hear ‘man on’, I know there might be pressure behind my back that I’m unaware of. 

SCW: Talk us through, then, the building blocks of turning, from players starting their soccer journey through to a more advanced level...

MK: I think the most basic one I would teach would be the sole turn, so to turn with the sole of your foot. It is the most stable technique, because you have the ball under control all the time.

Obviously, learning techniques with both feet is also important because it adds to the unpredictability of a player on the ball. That should perhaps be done from the youngest age up anyway.

The next turn I would teach would be the turn where I am wrapping my body around the opponent, because this is one that is very likely to happen more often. 

I wouldn’t be too prescriptive in teaching players to turn. I wouldn’t be giving them 50 different turns to execute. 

I would try to encourage the natural tendencies and preferences of our players by teaching them in small-sided games and allowing them to find solutions in moments.

You can perhaps provoke this by introducing various constraints to the situation, such as the ’no passing back to the team-mate that gave you the ball’ constraint.

Throughout their journey, but especially in the formative grassroots years, encourage players to take risks, allow them to make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes. 

As a coach, perhaps don’t be the centerpiece of the show - be a supporting act, a helper for our players in this process, to ask them questions about what they could have done better, especially when very similar mistakes are being repeated. 

Practising turning even in an unopposed way and asking players to come up with unconventional terms is a nice thing to do.

"Risk-taking offers a large reward if done at the right moments in the 11v11 game..."

The most important thing is to allow risk-taking - because risk-taking offers a large reward if done successfully and at the right moments in the 11v11 game.

Turning is an under-appreciated and under-discussed topic when it comes to attacking. It can be a real door opener to create promising attacking situations.