Learn the body feint: shoulder, hips and eyes sell the move, the ball goes the other way. With milestones, mistakes list and defender pressure.
The body feint is the simplest and most honest feint in football: you suggest a direction with shoulder, hips and eyes – and go the other way. The ball stays close to your foot the whole time; no foot trick is needed. The DFB training service uses feints in a training session as a building block for dribbling and finishing, step by step from free space to an opponent [1].
How quickly you learn it depends on how clean your first feel for ball and pace is. The prerequisite: you can drive the ball in both directions with inside and outside of the foot without looking constantly. The rest is timing – and the courage to really show the feint.
Dribble towards a cone. Shortly before it, you suggest a break to one side with shoulder and upper body – your weight shifts there briefly. Then you pull the ball the other way with inside or outside of the foot and accelerate. The DFB concept says: a clear change of direction must be recognisable, after the feint you start away to the other side and deliberately raise the pace [1].
Milestone: 10 clean feints in a row with right and left, without the ball getting away.
Use a triangle of about 3 x 3 metres: in, show the feint, out and then a pace dribble. The feint should be "clear and clean" [1] – slower and clear beats hectic and half-hearted.
Milestone: one feint in the triangle followed by a pace dribble of 10 to 15 metres without losing the ball, 5 times per side.
A defender stands at the back of the triangle and reacts only partly at first: he may react to the feint or move the other way. You watch his reaction and go to the free side. The DFB concept states explicitly: the attacker must watch this movement and start away towards the free side accordingly [1].
Milestone: you get past the passive opponent in 5 of 8 attempts.
Now the defender tries to win the ball. Pressure arrives, which is why looking up matters now [1]. Don't show the feint too early – only once the defender is in reach and has his weight on one foot.
Milestone: 5 duels in which you deliberately vary your feint (left, right, short, long).
Build the feint into 1v1 and 4v3 situations, as in the DFB final form [1]. What counts now is not the pretty feint but whether you get past afterwards.
The body feint stresses mainly knee and ankle through abrupt stopping and pushing off. Warm up well and practise the changes of direction at moderate pace first. Wear shoes that match the surface. With pain in the knee or ankle: rest, don't "push through". Standardised warm-up programmes such as FIFA 11+ lowered overall injury risk in a meta-analysis – by about 39% (rate ratio 0.61) in four studies [2] – which makes the preparation minutes worth it. This guide explains and motivates but does not replace supervised training.
If you want to shoot straight after a feint, expect less power: in a study with ten young amateurs, ball speed after a double faking change of direction was clearly lower (16.73 instead of 19.78 m/s) than after a straight run-up [3]. For you that means: take one step to settle after the feint and place the shot instead of going for maximum power.
You suggest a direction with shoulder, hips and eyes and then go the other way. The DFB describes it as a clear, recognisable change of direction after which you start away to the other side and raise the pace [1]. The ball stays at your foot.
No. The body feint works through upper body and weight shift. You only need good ball carrying with inside and outside of the foot. Foot tricks such as the step-over build on it later.
With cones or jackets: dribble towards a cone, feint shortly before it and accelerate to the other side. The DFB concept uses a small cone triangle for this [1]. Film yourself once from the front – that shows whether the feint is really recognisable.
In matches pressure and lack of time are added. The DFB set-up therefore progresses from free space to passive to active opponents and reminds you to look up [1]. Practise in exactly that order.
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