Are you a young, ambitious attacking midfielder looking to break into professional football? If you’ve ever wondered, “What training regimes should I be doing, as an attacking midfield, to reach a professional level?”, then you’re in the right place. This blog post will offer valuable insights, expert tips, and a detailed training plan to help you impress the scouts and carve out a successful career in professional football.
Attacking Midfielder Training
Understanding the role and demands of an attacking midfielder is critical to your success. This position is one of the most influential in football, requiring exceptional technical skills, physical fitness, tactical intelligence, and the ability to make critical decisions under pressure. Your training regime should mirror these demands.
Physical Conditioning for Attacking Midfielders
Being physically fit is crucial for any footballer, particularly attacking midfielders. Your training should focus on developing speed, endurance, agility, and strength.
Speed and Agility
Interval training, sprint drills, and agility ladder exercises can help improve your speed and agility. Aim to include these workouts at least twice a week.
Set up cones in a straight line or zig-zag pattern and practice sprinting and changing direction as quickly as possible. You can also include ‘suicide sprints’, which involve sprinting to a cone, then sprinting back to the start, before sprinting to the next cone.
Endurance
Incorporate long-distance running and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) into your routine. This will build your stamina, enabling you to maintain a high performance level throughout the match.
Incorporate Fartlek training, which is a form of interval training that mixes continuous running with speed work. For example, after a 5-10 minute warm-up, sprint for 30 seconds, then jog for 90 seconds, repeating this for around 20-30 minutes, followed by a cool-down.
Strength
Bodyweight exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and squats can enhance your strength. Consider integrating weight training to develop power in your lower body for effective shooting and tackling.
Plyometric exercises like box jumps, burpees, and power skips can increase your explosive power. For lower body strength, focus on squats, lunges, and deadlifts. For upper body strength, incorporate bench presses, overhead presses, and pull-ups.
Technical Skills Development
A top-class attacking midfielder possesses impeccable technical skills. Your training should consistently work on improving these key areas:
Ball Control and Dribbling
Regularly practice drills that improve your first touch, control in tight spaces, and dribbling at speed. The more comfortable you are with the ball, the more effective you will be in matches.
A simple yet effective drill is ‘gates dribbling’, where you set up several pairs of cones (the gates) and dribble the ball through them as quickly as possible. For ball control, juggle the ball with both feet, thighs, and head, aiming to increase your consecutive touches over time.
Passing and Vision
Work on different types of passes—long, short, through balls. Enhance your vision with perception-training drills. This will help you make smarter decisions and split defences with killer passes.
To practice passing, set up targets in different areas of the field and try to hit them with various types of passes. For improving vision, have teammates or friends move around while you dribble, and you must call out their movements without looking directly at them.
Shooting
As an attacking midfielder, you’re often in positions to score. Practice shooting from different angles and distances. Master shooting with both feet to be unpredictable to opponents.
A drill for shooting is to set up cones at various distances from the goal and practice shooting from these spots. You can also practice ‘first touch shooting’, where a partner passes the ball to you and you shoot immediately after controlling the ball.
Tactical Understanding
Understanding the tactical side of football is equally important. Watch professional football matches and study how top attacking midfielders position themselves, make runs, defend, and contribute to the team’s tactics. This will improve your game sense and decision-making skills on the pitch.
Create game scenarios with your teammates or friends, and work on specific tactics like counter-attacks, pressing, and maintaining possession. Additionally, regularly watching and analyzing professional matches, especially focusing on top attacking midfielders, will significantly improve your tactical understanding.
Mental Conditioning
Mental strength is often what separates good players from great ones. Practice techniques like visualization, mindfulness, and goal-setting to build mental resilience. These skills will help you handle pressure situations, stay focused, and maintain a positive attitude.
- Visualization: Spend a few minutes each day visualizing successful game situations, such as scoring goals, making key passes, or winning tackles.
- Mindfulness: Practice mindfulness to stay present during games. This could involve focusing on your breath, the feel of the ball at your feet, or the sounds of the game.
- Goal-setting: Set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for your football development, such as improving your shooting accuracy or reducing your sprint time.
Consistency and Recovery
Remember, consistent training is key to developing your skills and physical abilities. Ensure to balance your hard work with adequate rest and recovery to avoid injuries and maintain peak performance levels.
Schedule your training sessions throughout the week, making sure to include rest days. After intense training, practice active recovery like stretching, foam rolling, or light aerobic activity. Proper nutrition and sleep are also essential parts of recovery.
Conclusion
The journey from being a grassroots player to a professional footballer is challenging but rewarding. The right training regime as an attacking midfielder can help you stand out in scouts’ eyes, paving your way to a successful career in professional football.
It’s not just about hard work but also smart work. A well-rounded training regime that focuses on physical conditioning, technical skills, tactical understanding, and mental conditioning is your ticket to success.
Remember, mastering these skills and routines takes time, so don’t rush the process. Stay dedicated, and your efforts will pay off in the long run. The best players are those who never stop learning and improving, so always stay open to feedback and new experiences.
The road to becoming a professional footballer starts here. Now, lace up your boots and get ready to train like a pro!