Soccer Ball and its History

A long time ago, a soccer ball was made out of a pig's bladder. Nowadays, they're high tech pieces of equipment that are designed to be precision made, lightweight, durable and multi-sided pieces of modern ingenuity.

A soccer ball has four major components: the cover, stitching, the lining and the bladder. These days, the outer part, or the cover of a soccer ball, is made of synthetic leather. In the 'old days', the cover of the soccer ball used to be made of full-grain leather, but that material absorbed too much water and the soccer ball grew too heavy. The synthetic leather that a soccer ball is made from today are lightweight and water resistant.

Each soccer ball is made up of 32 separate panels, though some designs use less and some use more. The 32-sided soccer ball is the most common and is used in professional soccer games around the world. Here's where a good head for math comes in. A soccer ball is made up of 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal panels. The panels on the soccer ball bulge out because of the amount of air pressure inside the ball. If fewer panels are used to construct a soccer ball, the ball tends to curve more when airborne, because it's less stable.

The panels on a soccer ball can be stitched or glued together, but the best soccer balls are stitched by hand, which gives the soccer ball a stronger, tighter seam. These hand stitched soccer balls are more expensive than those that are machine stitched, but they're well worth the extra dollars. The cheaper soccer ball choices are glued, and these soccer balls are commonly used for practice sessions.

A soccer ball is stitched together in a process that begins with cutting out the panels piece by piece. Holes are punches around the edges of these panels. Then the soccer ball panels are turned inside out so that when finished, none of the stitches will show on the outside of the soccer ball. A different type of needle is used on these pieces. When finished, the soccer ball is turned right side out and the bladder is placed inside and inflated. One person might make four soccer balls a day. After completion, each soccer ball must go through multiple tests and graded for quality and performance. If a soccer ball needs to be used for a professional match, it must undergo other tests before it ends up on the playing field.


Sources:
Soccer Uniform
Soccer Jerseys

Soccer Strategies of Defending

Most player and coaches said soccer is all about attack and if you have strong defend that no attack can break it then you just need to attack first and then defend then game will be yours. If we talk about the Skills and Strategy there comes three main skills of defending:

• Perform a Defensive header
  Catenaccio Defensive Strategy
  Zonal Defending
  Cruffy Turn
  

Given Above techniques or strategies are mostly named after the player or coach who descover it. Perform a Defensive header, comes when you are playing in defensive position and ball comes in your area in the air. The aim of is strategy is to clear the ball from your area and through it away from your field as high as possible and preferably towards a member of your own team. You need to judge the flight of the ball and get in line ready to jump as soon as you can as your opponent will also be looking to attack the ball. it is better to head the ball to either side of the pitch rather than into the middle. I think this is enough for Defensive header.

Now we go to the next strategy that is Catenaccio defensive strategy. Its mean “Lock”. This strategy is know as a bad one, negative football in modern soccer. To discard the tactical lessons learned from Catenaccio would be extremely foolhardy for any soccer coach however as, when performed correctly, it creates as solid a defensive strategy as has ever been displayed in modern football. In Catenaccio strategy teams would push for an early goal to lead 1-0 and would then defend in numbers based around their sweeper and two banks of three in front of him with the defence and midfield protecting each other against attack.

Zonal Defending comes third. It allows to sets defenders out to cover areas of the pitch or ‘zones’ rather than concentrating on marking one player in particular as in man-to-man marking. The defence typically will line up four players along the six yard box, one on the near post, one in the middle of the six yard box, one between them and one on the far post. Four more will then sit in front of them to offer further protection and to compete for the ball if it is cleared and returned to the penalty area. The main reason for using the zonal system is to identify the most dangerous area where the ball can be delivered to and have your best headers of the ball placed there ready to win the first ball and if not, to make sure they are in position to clear the second ball that comes in.

Shield the ball from your opponent with your back to him and the ball close to your feet and under your control, This happened when you apply cruffy turn. For its practice you will need a ball, an opponent and quick feet.

Just remember one thing playing soccer with out soccer uniform is looks like you are doing wrestling. So go and get you soccer uniform and soccer jerseys.