I used to be a young footballer with high aspirations. Now I help footballers and clubs achieve their dreams by introducing them to the wonders of VR technology and to how Be Your BestTM (the world’s leading VR Football training simulator) can take their game to the next level.
Football has gone from a sport where the best players could look like any other average Joe/Jane on the street, to becoming a sport where the top players look like they could easily get a part in the movie “300”. What has happened? And where will Football go from here?
Top footballers have gone from looking like this:
To this:
Zinedine Zidane, Maradona, George Best. All amazing players and legends of the game. If we compare them to players such as Lewandowski, CR7 and Erling Haaland, we can see that football has gone through a bit of a paradigm shift. The top players of the previous paradigm were not top players because of their physical prowess. They were top players because of their technical skills and their ability to read and understand the game - their scanning and awareness abilities.
Take a look at tapes from Zidane and pay attention to how calm he is whenever he gets the ball. He is calm because he knows his surroundings. Zidane dominates, not because his body is stronger and faster, but because his mind is. No-one really understood how he could do what he did, and we all settled with the explanation that he must have gotten a God given talent for scanning and awareness.
Football in 2023 has become very competitive, very fast, and very physical. Players no longer look like the average person on the street. They now look like they all could play in a superhero movie, as illustrated in the pictures above. With football becoming so physical it is more important than ever to gain that extra edge through improving scanning and awareness on the field. When bodies are moving faster, the mind needs to keep up! Players can no longer sit back and accept that some of their peers just have more talent for scanning and awareness. Players have to do everything they can to train these essential skills. If not, they will never be able to perform at the highest level.
The good news for aspiring footballers is that the top thinkers and researchers within football all agree that scanning and awareness are skills that can be taught and learned.
How can footballers train these skills in the most effective way? Be Your Best TM has previously written about The importance of scanning and awareness in football. Training this in the physical world is challenging because it requires a lot of time and resources. In addition, it would generate more strain to an already very strained body.
With Be Your BestTM players can train and improve their scanning and awareness skills, with zero strain to the body. With VR Football training, they can put in the extra work wherever, whenever, and stay ahead of the game. The VR Football Training Simulator is scientifically proven to improve player’s scan rate, which in turn is proven to increase forward pass completion rate.