Visual skills in soccer are essential.  Soccre is an extraordinarily complex sport.  A soccer player has to simultaneously keep track of the ball, his defender or the man he's defending, and teammates.  Soccer is also a very fast moving sport.  Visual skills that are important to soccer are fast focusing, tracking, depth perception, the ability to focus near and far instantly.  A soccer field is a vast sea of green.  It is very easy to lose the ball or your teammates.  The ability to distinguish colors and focus quickly is important.  Furthermore soccer takes an incredible amount of coordination.  Vision training is one of the best ways known to improve coordination and balance...not to mention focus and concentration.

Some symptoms of a visual breakdown are:

• Missed passes

• Breaking for the ball late

• Off sides penalties

• Missing headers

• Poor dribbling and balance

• Lack of concentration

The goalie is in a unique position to improve his/her game with vision training.  Vision is not just important, but essential to being a great goalie.  How can vision training help goalies?

• See the ball leaving the foot more quickly

• Ability to track the ball into hands

• Able to visualize where the shot is going (will it hit the corner, the post, over the net?)

• Better passing out of the cage

• Stop percentage should go up