SoccerSOCCER BY FRED ! 6 Soccer Soccer! Chapter 1: What Is Soccer?! Chapter 2: Kickin’ The Ball! Chapter 3: Rules Are Important! Chapter 4: Positions ! 3 4 5 6 7 Andrea Pirlo is right footed. 6 Soccer Soccer by Fred ! When you play soccer you need to know how to play, understand the rules, the positions and a whole lot of other stuff I don’t want to bore you with right now. This book will guide you through just about everything you need to know about soccer. This is the San Siro in Italy. 6 Soccer Chapter 1: What Is Soccer? ! First of all you need to know what soccer is. Soccer is a team sport with goals. The amount of players on a field is 10+1. (which means 11.) The ten players are defense, midfield and offense. The eleventh player is the goalie. You play with a ball. There are two halves of the game. The game is 90 minutes, that means each half has 45 minutes. You can substitute players, for example let’s say for instance a player gets hurt and can’t play anymore you can put another player on instead of him. If your team scores it counts as one point. If you score an “owngoal” it still counts as a goal. Here is a picture of how a field looks without players and positions. New word Owngoal: An owngoal is when you score in your own team’s goal. 6 Soccer Chapter 2: Kickin’ The Ball ! There are four types of kicks. the first one is called a goalie kick. A goalie kick "occurs when a person from the other team kicks the ball past the boundary line behind the goalie. The second one is called a high kick. A goalie does a high kick when he catches the ball inside the goalie box, without it going past him. After that the goalie may roll the ball to a player on his team or hurl the ball. If there is no open players the goalie usually drops the ball from his hands and This is a wall kicks the ball. The third kick is called a free-kick. A free-kick occurs when a player for example slide-tackles and the player who gets tackled falls and doesn’t get up right away. There is also a chance for the the guy who tackled to get a yellow card or a red card. The team who doesn’t get the free-kick can make a wall five steps away from the ball. I will talk about yellow and red cards in the next chapter. The fourth kick is called a penalty. A penalty occurs when a player or the goalie makes the other player fall badly inside the penalty box. Fun Fact Some really good players even shoot with both feet! 6 Soccer Chapter 3: Rules Are Important ! When you start playing soccer you probably want to know what a yellow and a red card is. When you do something bad like make an opponent trip over your leg or slide with your spikes facing the guys leg you will get a yellow card. If you Get a yellow you will have to be careful, because if you get a second yellow card it equals a red and you have to sit out for the rest of the game. Maybe you will get red card immediately if you do something very bad. If you trip an opponent they get a foul, there is now a chance of getting a booking ( a yellow or red card). If you complain too much the referee will give you a yellow card. If a foul occurs inside the penalty box it is called a penalty. You take the penalty 9 steps away from the goal. There’s a dot that shows you were the penalty should be taken. Yellow Card Red Card 6 Soccer Chapter 4: Positions ! There are four positions: Goalie, Defense, Midfield and Offense. The goalie may pick up the ball with his hands if he is inside his penalty box. He can hurl, roll or punt the ball, according to if any players are open. The defense tries to get the ball away from the offense, they can slide tackle. I would recommend doing it clean. If you are defense you can either be the defense that stays or the defense that runs a little more upfield for corners, penalties, free kicks etc. Midfield is the position were you run the most. When you are midfield you are in the middle of the field, you can be the defensive midfield, midfield or offensive midfield. The offense is the position that gets the ball and tries to score. Sometimes the offense goes down the field to defend. This is called a slide tackle. 6 Soccer Chapter 5: Practice ! I highly recommend practicing every day. The first thing you should work on is your shooting and passing. You can use walls to work on your shots and passing. You can practice juggling or dribbling everywhere, if you have a ball with you. If you have a couple of goals play soccer with your friends or family. Remember that the harder the ball is the better it works. If you want to be good at soccer listen to this advice, run 2-5 kilometers every second day, bike a lot, use weights to help your arms get stronger and do sit ups every day. if you are goalie you can also use a wall to practice. You throw the ball at the wall and wait for it to come back to you and try to catch the ball as best you can. The higher you throw it the higher it comes back to you, and vice versa. the harder you throw the ball the harder it comes back to you, vice versa. You practice your shots by standing and kicking the ball in the goal, if you want to challenge yourself you can kick from further distances. If you want to learn to shoot higher, find a cardboard box or something else and try to shoot over it or them. This is Cristiano Ronaldo, he is very good at dribbling around and through players. NEW WORD Vice versa Vice versa mens the opposite of something. 6 Soccer Chapter 6: Famous Players ! There are a lot of famous players throughout the history of soccer. One of the most famous players in the history is 1. Cristiano Ronaldo Pelé. Pelé could do everything 2. Leonel Messi as striker. The top ten players 3. Zlatan Ibrahimovi" today are... One of the best goalies in the 4. Eden Hazard world was Peter Smcheichel. 5. Robin Van Persie He is from Denmark. He won 6. Gareth Bale the award “Best goalkeeper in 7. Andrés Iniesta the world” one time. 8. Arjen Robben Pelé is from Brazil and is happy about that. 9. Robert Lewandowski 10.Wayne Rooney Peter Schmeichel really works on saving shots. 6 Soccer Chapter 7: Championships and Leagues ! First of all there are a lot of Championships and Leagues. The league that means the most to people in Europe is the UEFA Champions League. If you want to qualify for the Champions League, it depends on the place you finish in. If you for example are in the Danish League you have to finish first place, to qualify for the Champions League. The Champions League is really cool because, teams from different countries compete to win the cup,or trophy. Each fourth year there is a Euro cup. The national teams that are in the Euro cup are only teams from Europe. In 2012 Spain won the Euro 2012. In the Euro cup your team has to qualify to play. There is also a World cup each fourth year, but the Euro and the World cup is never held the same year. The Euro and the World cup are always held two years apart. Almost each country has a league. For example the spanish league is called La Liga. Each league has a different name. In most countries there are more than one league. The first division is the best league, the second is the league for the teams that aren’t as good as the teams in the first division. Some countries even have three leagues! This is the UEFA Champions League trophy 6 Soccer Chapter 8: Managers ! Now I am going to talk about managers. You might ask me “what are managers?”. Here’s the answer: Managers are the people who are in charge of the team. Usually the really good soccer players want to continue being in the soccer atmosphere. So they try getting a shot at being a Manager. Most of the soccer players become Managers. When soccer players get older they get worn out, and on average stop when they are 35-37 years old. Ryan Giggs is turning 40 in 2013! He plays for Manchester United, he is trying to make a record of playing 1,000 matches for Manchester United. When he finishes the 2013-2014 season he will probably have played 1,000 matches for Manchester United. There are a lot of good managers in soccer today. José Mourinho is a very good coach. In the season 2012-2013 he was coach for Real Madrid but after that season he returned to Chelsea. Pep Guardiola is also a good manager. He was the manager of Barcelona but he also decided to go to another team, he went to Bayern München. Sir Alex Fergunson was a great manager. He was the manager in Manchester United for 26 years! He had to quit being a coach after the Manchester United won the Premier League in the 2012-2014 season. 6