How to execute the most beautiful pass in football

An alley-oop is exciting and gets the crowd going like nothing else. A “saucer pass” is a brilliant piece of technique, whereby in Hockey the puck is flipped over the defender’s stick to a team-mate waiting to unleash a nasty slap-shot.  A perfectly placed set is a gorgeous ball placed by the setter in volleyball, (apparently, it’s considered a sport), so his/her power-hitter can unleash fury on the opposition. All of those above types of passes are great, however, none of these can come close to matching the best of all passes, the through ball pass in soccer.

Ok, ok maybe the set-pass in volleyball can match it… Juuuuuuust kidding, relax! Really though, is volleyball even a legit sport?

Ok so getting back to a real sport, namely, soccer.  The through ball is the ability to pass to a place where the player is going to be, by playing it behind the defence&

In fact, it’s crazy how most players can never master the through ball simply because they can’t wrap their brains around that.  They always end up passing to the feet of the player or barely in front of him thus ruining the entire point of a through ball.

Often the more ahead of the play the ball is played, the prettier the through ball is… In essence, the further “the passer can see into the future,” the more remarkable the pass.  Also, the more valuable that player is as a true playmaker.

One of the greatest athletes of all time, (no exaggeration at all there), the majestic Gretzky, (that’s hockey for those ignorant buffoons who only care about soccer…), encapsulated the same idea in his style of play:

            “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.”  

Oh, you’ve heard that before?  Yeah, it’s because it’s been quoted 57 billion times already.  

The through ball really is summed up in that idea. To be more precise, a through ball is more than just passing ahead of someone.  Essentially a through ball is passing the ball behind the defence, through one of the gaps (explained below), and into space where the runner will be…

So let’s get into the nuts and bolts, the meat and potatoes, the bread and butter, or whatever you want to call it of how exactly (kind of, it’s an art, hard to exactly qualify how), a through ball is done. Let’s learn some of the intricacies of how to pull it off shall we?  

The idea of passing to where they will be

See how Silva is passing to where the runner is going to be?  Simple right? It seems simple, and players think it’s simple when you explain it, but finding a true maestro who can actually apply this idea is harder than it would appear…

Often when you show the passer that the ball needs to go where the runner will be, and not where they are, they then “adjust,” by only passing it about two yards in front of the runner instead of 10, 15, or even 20.