Football: How to become technically skilled

Without good technical skills, neither you nor your team can perform at your best in football. But how do you actually become technically skilled?

Unfortunately, a new study shows that natural talent is not enough. Repetition and targeted training are essential.

“We investigated the relationship between eight different skills in football. We wanted to see if they were connected in some way, or if you have to develop them separately,” says Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at NTNU's Department of Psychology.

Icelandic elite team was tested

23 semi-professional players from Iceland participated in the study. All the players belonged to the same Icelandic elite club.

This provided a comparable basis in terms of training and match experience.

The players had to go through eight technical exercises from the Test of Technical Skills in Football (TTSF). These measure skills in:

• Juggling (keeping the ball in the air for one minute)

• Passing accurately at a distance of 25 metres

• Heading

• Kicking

• Dribbling

• Corner precision from 16.5 metres (shooting the ball from the end line into the goal from this distance)

• Shooting precision from 16.5 metres

• Wall-volley (pass the ball against a wall)

You have to practice everything in football

“The correlations between the different skills are low. We find minimal overlap,” says Sigmundsson.

This means that you have to practice the different skills separately. If you train yourself to become good at one of the skills, you will not automatically get better at another, he explains.

“This supports the hypothesis that you need to train motor skills separately. Practicing technical soccer skills requires targeted training. If you get better in one area, it doesn’t spill over to another,” says Sigmundsson.

Important for the coaches to know this

This information is important for both coaches and researchers.

“The training must be well thought out and differentiated if you are to get the best possible results. You have to adapt the training to the skills you want the players to get better at,” says Sigmundsson.

The professor worked together with colleagues from NTNU and Queensland University of Technology.

Reference:

Sigmundsson et al. The association between eight different skills in football: an explorative study, Football Studies, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.footst.2026.100033 

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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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