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Best first touch?


flany-kpl

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At one point in the game at the weekend, the ball was dropping from a fair high just at the side line (enclosure) where I was sitting and I knew that Aird was going to mis-control it, which he did. It probably was a difficult ball to control but as a professional footballer it really should be a basic skill for the players to be grasping

It had me thinking about players, past and present, who would have killed it dead and I'm wondering what player(s) other people think had the best control?

I rated Hemdani highly when it came to pulling the ball out the air with his feet.

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DeBoer & Laudrup. I remember the latter pulling down a cross field ball by flicking his heel up behind him and taking the pace off it. Just brilliant.

My pet hate is a professional footballer that can only use one foot. A prerequisite for any pro should be his ability to use either. In an interview Davie Cooper said that he could always hit a dead ball hard with one foot, so he practiced until he could do it with either. A decent first touch and two~footed should be the bare minimum requirements of a pro footballer these days.

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Tom Forsyth going in for a tackle. :)

Used to be a rising roar of anticipation as he started a distance away then narrowed down onto the target, then wallop straight through on to the ball, every time.

But Mols was the best for first touch and awareness I've seen for us.

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At one point in the game at the weekend, the ball was dropping from a fair high just at the side line (enclosure) where I was sitting and I knew that Aird was going to mis-control it, which he did. It probably was a difficult ball to control but as a professional footballer it really should be a basic skill for the players to be grasping

It had me thinking about players, past and present, who would have killed it dead and I'm wondering what player(s) other people think had the best control?

I rated Hemdani highly when it came to pulling the ball out the air with his feet.

mols 1st touch would see him beat almost all of his opponents. Some are natural raw talent. Others have feet like elephants
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Yep, seen him kill a few balls which must have had ice on it when they came down. Also his ability to accelerate while retaining total control of the ball was a joy to watch.

Gazza as well, always one step ahead of everyone else.

That's what I remember, high balls controlled to perfection, sometimes with the outside of his foot. Mols was different in that he had more of a transformative first touch, in that he could turn a mundane pass to himself into an offensive opportunity in an instant. De Boer as well to an extent. Both brilliant but manifested slightly differently a lot of the time. As a wee curve ball, Mark Walters also had a great tough. He was technically very good.
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At one point in the game at the weekend, the ball was dropping from a fair high just at the side line (enclosure) where I was sitting and I knew that Aird was going to mis-control it, which he did. It probably was a difficult ball to control but as a professional footballer it really should be a basic skill for the players to be grasping

It had me thinking about players, past and present, who would have killed it dead and I'm wondering what player(s) other people think had the best control?

I rated Hemdani highly when it came to pulling the ball out the air with his feet.

On a tangent to this subject - when I was younger one of the things we used to marvel at was the ability of 'foreign' players to kill / trap a ball - which is kinda of a sad indictment of uk skill levels at that time ( mid 70's) - skill levels have much improved

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JR. I take it from your comments that you did not rate either Jim Baxter or Ferenc Puskas then. Both one-footed, left, no jokes now, but brilliant at ball control.

Well you could take it like that, but you'd be wrong. And both of them could do more with their weaker foot than most today with their stronger. Perhaps I didn't make my point as succinctly as I first thought. (tu)

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