Laments of a Winger Anika Seshadri
I always thought soccer was so simple, that all you had to know was how to run, kick, and a few skills to evade pressure. When I joined my new team, I realized this wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg, but rather a snowflake perched atop. For all I knew, I could have been playing badminton my whole life for the number of positional tactics I’ve had to learn. Thankfully, I have gotten better. According to my coach I have improved from “embarrassingly abominable” to “slightly terrible”. While I know that my coaches have extensive knowledge in the game and Ishould trust their expertise, a lot of the work seems impossible to match their titanic expectations. My coach goes absolutely ballistic over pinching in on the weak side so, after months of begging and pleading, I finally decided to start paying attention to what he was saying. It was quite a rough beginning. For starters, soccer is a game that possesses a sense of fluidity to it. There are not as many stops, which does not fare well for me because of the extreme physical trauma that comes with playing winger. As I was learning positional play, these are (and I cannot stress this enough) realistic encounters between my coach and me. My coach: Pinch in! Pinch in! Ok. This seems easy enough. But, once the ball has moved inches away. My coach: What are you doing! You just told me to go there! My coach: Now go here! ... wait, no go back! Go back! GO BACK! Now, this doesn’t even include making decoy runs. When your team is attacking, wingers usually make decoy runs to either 1) draw defenders away from the ball or 2) did you think I was going to say “to get the ball”? I wish. In simple terms, a decoy run is an excru16
