Ori Hoffer: We are taking with Chris Klein, a midfielder for Real Salt Lake and we are talking, now, about shooting the ball; that's obviously, the most exciting part of the game for any player.
Chris Klein: For any player and if you look at the field here we have a 120 yards and when we finally get down here towards the goal we want to make the most of our opportunity. We can dribble, we can pass, but the most important thing is scoring goals, obviously, so that's what we would like to work on today.
As we talked in passing, our non-kicking foot is very important when shooting. Our non-kicking foot wants to be placed beside the ball and pointing towards our target. Okay. The second thing we want to remember when we are shooting is that once we get our non-kicking foot by the ball, we want to have our chest over the ball and our kicking foot to come forward and usually to hit shots we want to go with the sweet part of our foot, which is what we call our instep, which is right here and we want to land on our kicking foot. That gets all of our momentum pointing towards the goal, so to keep the ball on goal.
So non-kicking foot by the ball, chest over the ball, land on our kicking foot and, obviously, what we want to remember is we have got to keep the ball on the goal. The goalie will never have to make a save if the ball is not on goal. I used to have a coach that used to say that we would hit the post and put it over and hit high shots it was very exciting. What he also said is that we want to substitute power for accuracy. So it's more important to get the ball on goal than how hard you hit it. It doesn't matter how pretty it looks as long as it goes in the goal.
Ori Hoffer: If you really crank one how hard is that ball going?
Chris Klein: It can get up to 80 miles an hour and for a goalie that's going to be tough to see.
Ori Hoffer: We saw the movie 'Bend It like Beckham', how do you bend the ball so that it goes in different ways fooling the goalie?
Chris Klein: When we talk about, the most fundamental shot is hitting it with our instep. Now if you watch David Beckham, when he hits the ball a lot of times he hits it with the inside of his foot right here and what we are going to do there is you are going to come across the ball and your foot is just going to curve like that and the ball will bend. Same principles apply - non-kicking foot by the ball, but as you see I am coming at it from a different angle. My coach would have said that looks pretty.
Ori Hoffer: Now it's real easy to score when there is nobody in the net. Now we are going to try it with a goalie or a reasonable facsimile.
Chris Klein: Now we have added the element of the goalie, as we progress further we want to be conscious of where the goalie is, but the most important thing for an attacking player is to still remember the fundamentals. Our non-kicking foot by the ball, head and chest over the ball, and our kicking foot landing in the goal. And I am just going to take a few shots here. Here; there you go. Though I am hitting it straight at him. Now as we have talked about before let's substitute power for accuracy. So Ori moving that way just go back to the other side. All my fundamentals would be there, all the while keep an eye on the goalie to see where he is going. He ran through there. Oh! Common.
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