At my club, we do training twice a week and play a game on Sunday. The two sessions of training last one and a half hours each, Saturday and Thursdays. However, I usually go training for the school on Tuesday as well. Apart from this I also do my own personal training such as weights to build up my strength. In training we usually do an hour of running and half an hour of ball work; however training varies on our schedule depending on who we play. If we are going to play a physical team we work on fitness whereas if we are going to play a good passing team we work on passing skills.
The main aim of football is to score more goal in the opponents goal then they do in you team’s goal over a period of 90 minutes, which is split into two halves of 45 minutes with a 10 minute interval in between. The men in black are usually the referee and his assistants. The referee controls the game, by issuing yellow and red cards for players who try to cheat by using their hands or making bad tackles to injure their opponents. A yellow card is a caution and a red card means ‘your off’ and will probably get a suspension. If you are issued two yellow cards in a game, you will then automatically get a red and be sent off. If a player makes an illegal challenge during the course of the game, their opponents will either get a free kick or a penalty. There are two types of free-kick. An indirect free-kick is when a player has to touch the ball before the free-kick taker can shoot. The other type is a direct one and means the player can goal for goal without anyone having to touch it. If an illegal challenge or or a deliberate handball is made in the penalty area a penalty will be awarded to the opposition. A penalty kick is taken from the penalty spot. In a penalty there is no wall, just the goalkeeper trying to save it!
There are 11 players on each side and 22 on the pitch, which play in either: goal defence, midfield or upfront. The strikers are the players who are meant to get you the goals while the defenders and the goalkeeper are meant to stop them. The job for the striker is made harder by the defence trying to play the offside, which means the oppositions players are not allowed to be in front of the defence when the ball is played through. Other players are allowed to be in front of the defence however they shouldn’t be interfering with play. For a player to be onside he must be in line or behind two of the opposition players.
The two remaining rules of football are when the when the ball goes out of play either behind the goal or on the sidelines. When the ball goes behind the goal the ref will either award a corner or a goal kick, whereas when it goes out of play in the sidelines the ref will award a thrown in for one of the two teams.
My strengths in football are my stamina, speed and strength, both on ground and in the air. My speed is a good strength of mine because I usually tend to beat players by speed. My weaknesses are my vision and long balls. I am not a player which can create a killer pass or a great ball over from one side of the pitch to the other. I will improve this by working more on ball control in training.