Santi Cazorla: How to improve your weak foot

“Defenders keep shutting me out because they know I’m going to shoot with my right foot every time. How can I train my left?”
Fahad Nejeeb, via email

Santi Cazorla says:

“I’m trying to teach my son to play with both feet. I play in the back garden with him all the time, but he prefers his right!
 
I started playing with both feet ever since I began kicking a ball with my father; I’ve been lucky that it’s something I’ve always been able to do.

My coaches have always encouraged it in me, but you have to want to do it yourself.

All the technical work I do, and have ever done, I practise more of with my left foot: more technique, more shots on goal, more crosses.

The younger you start learning to play with both feet, the better, but anyone can improve by practising.

Any exercise or training session you take part in, you should attempt to do with either foot.

It improves every aspect of your game. Your game-management increases, as does your awareness of spaces around you to pass into.

Above all, you have to enjoy every session, because then it doesn’t feel like learning. Work, work, work is the secret to improving any aspect of your game.”
 
Cazorla wears the PUMA evoSPEED 1.2 boot

For more football tips:
Play like Spain: Master the 1 v 1
Play like Spain: Fast combinations: Part one
Play like Spain: Fast combinations: Part two
Play like Spain: Pass under pressure
Play like Spain: Make the killer pass

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Andrew Murray is an award-winning writer, columnist and editor, voted the Consumer Journalist of the Year at the 2015 PPA New Talent Awards. A fluent Spanish speaker and former semi-professional footballer, he was senior staff writer at FourFourTwo from 2012 to 2019, interviewing the biggest names in the game from Lionel Messi (twice), Neymar and Luis Suarez, to Sergio Aguero, Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah for the cover, among others. He continues to write and edit for the brand on a regular basis, plus national newspapers, websites, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and Premier League clubs. He is not a famous tennis player.