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How do you measure up against the pros? | |
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Around the Academy: |
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Can u learn to pass like Steven Gerrard?
BBC Sport Academy looks at Supaskills - the football training session which takes science onto the football pitch.
Have you ever fancied taking Michael Owen on in a penalty shoot out or comparing your passing with Steven Gerrard ? Well now you can. Former Liverpool star Craig Johnston has devised a way of measuring your football skills against the Premiership stars in the playground.
He has divided the game up into ten different skills in areas such as passing, shooting and heading. Each of these skills are then divided into another three areas:
You will complete the drill against the clock and be given a score at the end. The beauty of the system is it gives you the chance to measure how good you are at a skill and then go out and try and beat that the next day.
You can also find out how you can measure up to David Beckham - and see how you do against the national average.
Like a golf handicap, it is standardised globally so you can measure yourself against the best in the world. The scheme has been adopted by the Australian national team and by a host of top European Clubs. It has been endorsed by Fifa and the Premier League themselves. It is the first football program which aims to turn skills to scores to data. One school playground in South London has already been transformed into a Supaskills factory. Johnston, who also created the Predator football boot, says he thinks it will make football more exciting for kids.
"I realised that I wasn't good enough to be a footballer in any context and needed to get some skill quickly from somewhere," he tells the Sport Academy. "The joy of soccer is that the ball is a perfect object and it doesn't make mistakes - the more you use it the less mistakes you make.
"So I started this routine of spending four or five hours a day with a football in a car park in Middlesbrough after Jack Charlton basically told me to chuff off back to Australia. "I set out to prove him wrong and manipulate this ball to do what you asked of it. That's when this project started." So, if you don't believe you're good enough to be a pro - then think again - and sign yourself up to one of these schools.
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