How To Do A Football Cross

Hi, my name's Matt Dilworth. I'm a Saturday Intermediate League goalkeeper, and I also run and manage my own Sunday league side. And today, I'm going to take you through some football basics to help get you started.

Okay, this is how to do a cross in football. This is something that's probably going to be more predominate in a match or game scenario, where the ball is going to have some of the momentum created for you, be it through yourself having a little run and beat in your fall back, or one of your teammates laying you in down the line to stick a cross in. The same principles apply to sneaking a corner in.

You need to be beating the first man and you want to put a really dangerous ball into the penalty area so that your attackers can try to meet it. Importance to beat the first man, again, your body position is all caved in and your foot is alongside the ball, leaning back and getting some loft on the ball and putting one in there on sort of the edge of the six shard box, probably preference so that the attackers can run on to meet it. So, James is just going to lay one in and I'm just sort of going to run into it while the ball is still in motion and just put it in across it.

Another type of cross is where you can just float the ball in with plenty of loft into the center of the penalty area and making sure you get loads of heart onto it, allowing your teammates to attack the ball. This might come into an example where you may have the luxury of quite a bit more space; you're able to get a touch and get your head up and pick a good position to place the cross. So, James is just going to lay a pass in and I'm just going to take a touch, look up and float one in by getting right underneath the ball.

Quite a lot of the time in a match situation, you will not have the time and luxury to get your head up and to pick a spot for your cross. You will come to times when you will not get the ball across your attacker and very little time to react or think about it. Send an instinctive cross into the box at pace for your attackers.

So here, I'm just going to knock the ball to one side as if I'm going to knock it past my fullback, just whip across him as quickly as I can at pace. .