RSL Soccer Tips - Passing

Ori Hoffer: We are talking with Chris Klein, a midfielder for Real Salt Lake and Chris thanks so much for joining us.

Chris Klein: Thanks for having me.

Ori Hoffer: So we are going to talk about passing the ball today. You have talked about dribbling; now we have got to work on moving the ball to your teammates.

Chris Klein: As we mentioned when we were dribbling the ball. When we get this ball we want to keep the ball. The first thing we talked about is dribbling the ball. The second thing and, well, obviously, more important because soccer is such a team game is passing the ball.

Now there are few key things that we want to remember when we are passing the ball. So Ori if you stand over here we could work on those things. The first thing we want to remember is if I am passing the ball with my right foot, my non-kicking foot my left foot will be placed beside the ball pointing straight to Ori. That's kind of my point of reference. So that when I come up where my non-kicking foot is, is where the ball is going to go. So I play it in to Ori. Now the one thing that we forget a lot when we are passing the ball is that we have to receive it first. We need to receive the ball and if Ori passes it to me and I stop it like this a lot of kids think they have to back up again and then pass.

So Ori if you pass to me again the second thing we want to remember is let's keep the ball moving, so that we can be come to the ball when we pass it again.

The third thing we want to remember and lastly is the weight of our pass. Passing's key thing is that we want to keep possession and when we pass it to our teammates; we want them to be able to keep the ball. So if Ori plays me the ball, I keep the ball moving with my non-kicking foot. If I play with a ball real hard like that, he is going to have to take a couple of touches before he can keep it again.

So what we want to do is settle the ball in a nice way to pass, so Ori can stop it and play it again and those are the three things we want to remember when we are passing the ball. For me, passing is the most important thing in soccer because it involves other teammates and it helps us to keep the ball going forward.

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