When it comes to improving your skills as a player, Allen Iverson said it best: "We talking about practice." No, we don't mean it in the sarcastic way he said it. When it comes to ensuring on-field success during a match, it starts with training the right way during your practice sessions. And to train the right way, you need the right equipment. From goals to rebounders, pinnies to balls, there's no shortage of gear you could spend your money on.

The day has come — no more sessions, drills, videos or talks. It’s time to go face the opponent and come home with three points. Now, what you do before and after the game is as important as what you do during — or during your coaching sessions — so it’s worth analyzing how to be efficient and professional during this time. 

Warming up has plenty of benefits, such as: it increases muscular temperature, improves flexibility, promotes concentration, elevates your motivation, etc. Basically, soccer warm up drills lead you to the proper pre-competitive state, and this is very important and very obvious, so I will not go much further on the subject.

Many years ago, there was once a time when I was an economist, and believe it or not, over the years I've realized that economics and soccer have many things in common. 

Hold on, wait a minute ... WHAT??!!

Dan Blank, the author of the SoccerIQ Series, remarks in all of his books that if you want to coach and play soccer, you have to believe details matter.

He’s absolutely right.

I have to go back to these subjects; I can’t help it. Soccer is a conservative sport in comparison to many others, based on beliefs and myths that might sound accurate but (most) have never been proven to be the most effective. Soccer is an old-school guy that hates change and does a lot of stuff simply because “it's always been done like that.”

Pep Guardiola frequently says he considers himself  “a great thief” as everything that he does he’s seen it somewhere and took it for himself and his teams. Well Pep, if that’s the case bud, keep going because it’s working pretty darn good.

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“Come on Pablo! You can’t touch that speech! It’s glorious; have some respect!”

Please don't hate me; I know we all love Al Pacino's speech from "Any Given Sunday." I do too. In fact, it still gives me the goosebumps every time I see it.

Juan Roman Riquelme, the legendary Argentinian midfielder, replied once on TV when asked about Leo Messi: “I’m not completely sure Messi is human. I have never seen a person that runs faster with the ball at his feet than without it. Messi does. How can you do that? Think about it, it doesn’t make sense.”

How many times have we heard things like this?

Failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup was hard to digest, very hard, so our hot soccer-blooded hearts make us feel that everything is wrong, and our soccer is the worst. That’s just the heat of the moment; truth is that U.S. soccer is pretty good, and it has gotten better and better over the last couple of decades.