Juggling in soccer is the act of using all parts of your body to keep bouncing the ball in the air. Learning to juggle at the 8u age can seem tedious for players, but it’s a wonderful skill to incorporate into your practice and pregame warmup. It gets the players comfortable using multiple surfaces of their body to play the ball, increases their touch (or feel) of the ball, and provides an indirect (and fun) way to stretch out your muscles and begin to warm up your body.
Get in the habit of every practice before everyone is there to get 5 minutes of juggling in. Occasionally keep them juggling until someone gets a new record. Sometimes I’ve set juggling contests at the beginning of the season. Such as if anyone can get to 10, they get to be involved in picking the last fun activity at practice. As a rule of thumb players should at a minimum be able to juggle their age.
There are several different ways to start young players off on juggling. I like this method:
How To Juggle a Football/Soccer Ball | Beginner Tutorial
For older and more skilled players, you can set goals for them to learn specific tricks such as these:
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