Aerial Soccer Tactics Studies Nov-Dec

I experimented at length with various methods for starting & continuing aerial runs (I run with the ball kept off the ground and under control), with the first touch of the aerial run involving me stopping an incoming ball. Looking at the data, an abbreviated pattern that contained what I for now have labeled the 'Alpha Sequence' sequence, showed a successes/attempts percentage of 89%, which was clearly superior to other tested patterns. I call this pattern, the 'Shark' pattern. The 'Shark' pattern contains the alpha sequence.

This 'Shark' pattern, involved less touches on the ball compared to most of the patterns tested. I decided to add on to it at the end, a bounce and a touch. I call the 'Shark' pattern with the added bounce and touch at the end the 'Megashark' pattern. Then I decided to test the 'Megashark' pattern, with the start involving me flipping the stationary ball up in the air ('FB' start), as opposed to the start involving me stopping an incoming ball ('SB' start).

I felt surprised at how the success/attempts percentage rate for 'Megashark', with 'Megashark' being launched with the 'FB' start, was at first only 66%, whereas the successes/attempts percentage for its predecessor, 'Shark', when launched with the 'SB' start, was 89%.

When I had been testing 'Shark' with the 'SB' start, I had been striving for long fast runs, which actually reduced the successes per attempts percentage as opposed to increasing it.

'Megashark' is 'Shark' with a bounce and a touch appended at the end. Apparently, this bounce and touch results in a reduction of the successes/attempts percentage, a reduction of an extent that I had not anticipated or expected.

I suspect that the general body-motion mechanics of starting with the flip-up of a stationary ball ('FB'), is different enough from such for starting with the stop of an incoming ball ('SB'), that what works well with one type of start will not work as well with the other type of start.

Using the 'FB' start, I tested out new and different patterns that contained the 'Alpha-sequence' structure, and that ended with a bounce and a touch.

Also I tested out patterns that bore a general resemblance to the patterns I had tested that contained the 'Alpha-sequence' with the bounce and the touch appended at the end. Some of these patterns did not even contain the 'Alpha-sequence', although they were modelled on patterns that did.

My plan is to by practice maintain my skill on the patterns that are scoring high enough to be deployed during games, while at the same time improving the successes/attempts percentage on patterns that have been producing lower scores until these lower scoring patterns are good enough to also deploy during games.

Generally I estimate that as of now my lowest scoring patterns, are producing success rates of about 67%, two out of three. If just one tenth of the 67% that succeeded resulted in goals, this would give me a goals per possessions rate of 6.7%. And this does not even take into account, that often the runs are of good quality even though they cannot be counted as 'successes', because of technicalities such as wrong part of body used at wrong time, or ball bouncing at wrong time.

By way of comparison, the goals per possessions rate in the top English League is about 1.5%, meaning you could guess that the rate is about 3% for possessions in the opponent half of the goal.