Attacking Phase
Once your player has taken his crucial first touch and has gotten the ball under control in a less-pressured area where he can have time to look up, his next step is to see how many defenders are between the player and the goal, and to develop a plan to get around them. Why? Because the player wants to get the ball away from his own goal (to keep his opponent from scoring) and to get the ball fairly close to the opposing goal (to improve his chances of scoring).
When the player receives the ball, and is not yet in shooting distance of goal, what he wants to do is to get within scoring range of the goal in a way which is best calculated to allow him to "beat" the opposing defenders. By the same token, one of the most dangerous defenders to an attacker is a defender coming up from behind him at speed, so the attacker does not want to get around the defender too early if there is any chance that the defender will be able to catch up with the attacker before he gets to goal.
If the attacker is blessed with unusually high speed, and can outrun any opponent, he has the luxury of being able to race towards the opposing goal at top speed. It is very difficult for a defender to slow down an attacker who is moving at top speed without committing a foul, and it is relatively easy for the attacker to move around any stationary defender with a simple touch to one side. As a result, this can be an excellent technique for a very fast attacker to use on some occasions. However, a wise coach will not overuse such attacks, because this makes the attacks (and the likely attacker) too predictable for the defense; the team wastes valuable learning time by using single attacking option instead of learning various styles of attacking; and the fast player wastes too much time on emphasizing a style of play which likely won't benefit him in the long run, while failing to learn how to participate in group attacking or how to handle opponents who are as fast as he is (as speed defences tend to diminish significantly after adolescence). Instead, the wise coach will try to train his players in how to attack individually, and as a group, when the opponents are as fast as they are.
