West Ham’s Dribble King Martin Samuelsen on How He Mastered Flair Play

There was a time not too long ago when only the anoraks and the insiders could claim to know much about the future stars of the game. But between the proliferation of TV coverage and the rise of social media, this has changed completely.

So even though he has yet to make an appearance in the Premier League, West Ham United winger Martin Samuelsen, currently on loan at Blackburn Rovers, already has a small but enthusiastic fanbase. Because while online showreels are notoriously unreliable indicators of talent, the 19-year-old undeniably has something—a kind of natural grace and swagger on the ball that all football fans love.

“When I was a kid, the most important thing for me was to win games,” Samuelsen told Bleacher Report. “And I found that the easiest way for us to win games was for me to just get the ball and score goals myself. So I did that more and more, got better at it and started learning different kinds of dribbles.”

It has become quite common in football parlance to describe players such as Samuelsen, those with polished technique and a range of skills, as having “natural ability” or “natural talent.” The use of the word “natural” implies his qualities were somehow bestowed upon him by the universe—that he is simply the grateful winner of some kind of genetic lottery. But behind every swerve and each cutback lies innumerable hours of meticulous practice.

From the age of seven, Samuelsen practiced a number of skills and dribbles in a systematic, targeted way. Together with his father, he developed a system: His father would show him video clips of specific skills, and they would give each dribble a name and put them all into a spreadsheet. They then devised a scale from one to 10 on which to mark the youngster’s familiarity with that particular dribble.

Level 1 was simply knowing the dribble; Level 10 was mastering it to the point it could be used in matches with a success rate of 80 per cent or higher. The goal was to reach 10 with all the moves in the spreadsheet. “My father helped me,” Samuelsen said. “It was nice to have a system, to see the progress. But it was my father who was the brains of the operation.”

His father, Frode Samuelsen, told Bleacher Report he saw early on that his son had something: “First of all, he’s a quick learner. And he has a very competitive nature, so he is motivated by improvement. That motivation has always been strong, and he has always sought to learn things.

“He never stops until he has fully mastered the thing he’s trying to learn. He’s honest with himself. A lot of people convince themselves that they’ve mastered something and that they don’t need to practice any more, but Martin never stops. That mentality is important.”

With his son eager to learn, Frode helped Martin devise the system so that he would get the greatest possible benefit from all the hours spent with the ball.

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“I think what we got right was that we started working on technical drills at a very early stage, and we added enough of those so that they addressed all the various motor skills that are important at the age he was at,” Frode explained.

“It’s a cliche, but there is such a thing as the golden age for motor-skill development. It starts early and it ends at around 12 years of age. So it’s important to spend a lot of time on these things at that age.

“Also, when we created the scale of one to 10 and used that both during training and during games, I think we got it right in the sense that we used the technical elements right up to the point where they become productive. We didn’t just work on technical details in isolation; the goal was always to utilize them in matches.”

In addition to spending hours training on his own almost every day, Samuelsen spent his time between the ages of seven and 12 playing for more than one team; he’d train and play with his own age group, but he’d also train and play with the age group above him. He visited several clubs around Europe, including Real Madrid, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool.

In short, he played …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com