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Review by John Lehman
Anybody want to place bets on what sport they'll be playing on a typical Saturday afternoon 25 years in the future? For sure it's football or baseball now, depending on the TV channel you watch. But we parents of young kids know there's another sport coming on fast -- that longtime European and South American favorite, soccer.
On a recent Saturday morning, I watched a group of seven- and eight-year-olds play their version of this most popular team sport in the world. Then I happened to see "Soccer: How to Play Like a Pro," and understood the game a lot better. A first-cousin to football, soccer is played between two teams of 11 players each, trying to move the ball down the field, across the goal line and into the other team's goal. The thing that makes soccer different is that players can move the ball with any part of the body except the arms and hands, from the shoulders to the fingertips. It's really more of a foot-ball sport than football.
This book, part of the Converse All-Star series, explains the rules, training (the brain as well as muscles), dribbling, passing (the most important soccer skill), receiving, shooting, goal keeping, strategizing and restarts. None of this sounds too unusual until you remember that you cannot use arms and hands. Every section starts with a brief list entitled "Keep focused," and players will have to if they're playing without their arms and hands.
This mental concentration is probably the most important part of a game that, at first glance, looks like 22 players running around in pursuit of a loose ball. Of course, players use their heads to hit the ball as well. It's a real heady game.
"Soccer: How to Play Like a Pro" has black-and-white photos to demonstrate the moves and terms throughout the book. Special pages include interviews with soccer stars Bill Andracki and Mary Harvey (soccer is played by male and female, big and little). The two-page glossary at the back also helps. We'd all better be learning the game our kids already know.
John Lehman spends his Saturday mornings at soccer games in Asheville, North Carolina.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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