Soccer goalies do not toe-kick. Nobody does. There’s just no way to have any accuracy at all with a toe kick.
But they use their instep, right? Isn’t that what’s generally meant by a toe kick? Leading with your toe, not actually making contact with only your toes?
No, the guy who was saying “toe-kick” meant straight on, hitting the ball with the toe of your shoe.
Hitting the ball with the instep is what we call “soccer style”. They didn’t used to do that.
The soccer drop kick is also performed usually with a sideways stroke, unlike a football punt. Aim and distance is more controllable that way. Also, the kick is frequently struck just as the ball rebounds from the surface of the field, letting you connect with the ball when your foot is at the peak of its power and speed.
The football punt is performed more straight on due to the shape of the ball, and to more easily impart a controlled spin to the football.
There’s some confusion here, because people use “instep” to mean either the upper “lace-covered” part of the foot or the side of the foot. The side of the foot is what Americans refer to as “soccer-style”.
When I said “toe kick” I meant either a true toe kick or a lace-covered-instep kick; for my purposes it doesn’t make much difference, because either way you kick by snapping the knee forward and don’t rotate your hips. This is the stroke that I assumed American kickers transferred from the drop-kick to the place-kick.
After reading GargoyleWB’s response, and watching a soccer coaching video, I see that I was wrong; the soccer drop-kick isn’t a straight-on knee snap.
So I’m back to Square One on place-kick theories. I guess spoke- is right; we just didn’t know how to kick!
Unfortunately, I was in the stands ('76?) when collegian Tony Franklin kicked a 64 and 65 yarder against us barefoot.
Not when they’re talking about place kickers.
You have two basic strikes in soccer.
For a driven shot, or a long cross, the “instep” is used. . .where your laces are. Where you strike the ball, and the angle of your leg and foot determine if it’s a cross or a shot.
For a slower paced, typically rolling ball one uses the inside part of your foot with more of a leg-swing/pushing motion. No one has ever kicked a football this way.
Whenever you hear someone say “he kicks soccer syle” they’re talking about using the instep, not the inside of the foot. That’s how you place-kick a football.
So you’re saying the main difference is how much the kicker’s ankle is bent? As in, slightly pointed down for a “soccer style” kick, and closer to ninety degrees for a “conventional” kick?
And the approach. In a toe kick you come straight at the ball. For soccer style you start two steps to the left of the ball and three steps back (if you are a righty). Your leg doesn’t swing perpendicular to the ground.
This video has some good shots of the soccer style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dh4GHH17O0
That rule must have been put in place since Tony Franklin’s day.
FWIW, until the 60’s, the kicker was usually a position player who did it as a sideline, perhaps to help make the team by having an extra ability. Lou Groza was primarily a tackle, Gino Cappelletti a receiver, for instance. They simply didn’t have much time to practice kicking and really weren’t all that good at it by more recent standards, and the teams didn’t take it as seriously then as they do now. Some still don’t give it enough respect, oddly, considering that usually the kicker scores more points than anyone else - perhaps that’s because they often aren’t seen as “real players”.
The American ball used to be much rounder way back when, more like a rugby ball, before passing became popular and it was narrowed down to facilitate it. That ended the once-common dropkick, since bounces were no longer predictable. Meanwhile, in soccerless America, young athletes were taught to kick straight ahead because their coaches didn’t know anything else.
This is not at all how I use the terms.
Toe-kick is literally a kick with the pointy part of the shoe, the toe. When we played soccer, we were taught not to kick the ball this way. It is the easiest way to hit a ball with a lot of power–with such a small point of contact, the compression-decompression of the ball makes it just shoot out from your foot. Problem is, it’s next to impossible to control.
Kicking with the instep is the standard soccer kick. You’re hitting with a much larger surface area and getting much more control over your kicks. With practice, you can get a lot of power as well. This is kicking with the top part of your foot, from the toe up to the top of the laces.
As Trunk said, for passing there is kicking with the inside (or outside) of your foot, where your arch is. I’ve never heard this referred to as the “instep”. The “instep” is where your laces are. The “inside” is where your arch is. Nobody kicks a football with the inside of their foot.
This site recommends that a football be struck by the eyelets, at the boundary between the laces and the side of the shoe.
As some have already pointed out, soccer goalkeepers don’t kick the ball with their toes. They generally hit it with the lace area of the boot, and kick using at least a partly side-on motion.
Also, the drop-kick is still a very important part of rugby, because a drop-kick from general play that goes between the uprights is called a field goal, and i worth three points. I can’t think of a single rugby kicker who executes a drop-kick using the point of the toe.
In summary:
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Oblong footballs were kicked with the toes straight on when the ball is ‘placed’ on the ground (it isn’t just an evolution of the drop kick, because it was also used in American football to kick off to start the game and after scoring). Presumably this is because it seemed more natural to do so with an oblong ball that would be sent spinning end under end, helping to maintain direction, since in general you want field goals and kick offs to go straight (instep soccer kicks with rounder balls usually swerve sideways due to spin).
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The way a soccer ball is kicked with the instep is not exactly how an American football is kicked with the instep. Instep kicks with round balls are not intended to gain quick hight at the expense of distance, usually, nor is it imperative they be kicked straight. The difference may well have made most kickers shy away from “soccer” style kicks until the Gogolaks experimented with it, and demonstrated a way to do it that allowed for accuracy and distance.
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An “instep” drive kick in soccer is how goal kicks are taken, how long passes are kicked, and, with only the variation that the ball is off the ground at impact, how the keeper will put the ball back in play when sending it long down the field. The American football toe-kick was aided by use of special footwear that had a flat front across the toes, to help avoid mis-kicks; Tom Dempsey was so good because his kicking foot was only a club, allowing a specially made shoe that was like hitting the ball with a hammer. No one uses the side of the foot in American football to do anything except try onside kickoffs; in soccer they are used primarily for short, controlled passing.
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Contrary to what some think, it is perfectly acceptable to toe-poke the ball in soccer; you just do so at the expense of accuracy. Often, goals are scored from toe-pokes, since the scorer doesn’t have the ability to put his whole foot on the ball in time.
I think there’s another reason mixed in here. Punting.
As ElivsL1ves pointed out, until fairly recently kicking was only a part-time job on most teams. I don’t know the roster stats, but I’ll bet that for decades the player who did the punting also did the place-kicking. Learning to kick one way for a punt and another way for place-kicking (on top of whatever other position they were playing) would have been a lot for any player to master.
On nearly every NFL team, the backup to the kicker is the punter and the backup to the punter is the kicker. In high school, nearly all of these players performed both functions. There really isn’t separation of the skills until you get to the college level and that’s because college rosters are pretty big.
USC has a place kicker for PATs and most field goals. Then they have a guy who just kicks long field goals. Then there is a guy who just kicks off. And then they have a punter.
Here’s some picture goodness of the rugby league styles
Toe-pokers Steve Gearin and Steve Rogers (1981)
http://goldweb.com.au/~softtail/gearinrogers.jpg
First style of round the corner, Greg Alexander (1990)
http://goldweb.com.au/~softtail/brandy.jpg
Mordern style, Johnathon Thurston (2006)
http://goldweb.com.au/~softtail/thurston.jpg
This is not my understanding of a soccer kick. In a soccer kick the top of the foot where the laces are is not what hits the ball. It is inside part of the foot is what makes contact with the ball.
I am old enough. It was because the game of soccer was practicallly non existant at that time. They got their kickers from abroad. Yapremiam was I think from Cyprus. After his first field goal he came running off the field saying “I keeked a touchdown”. Alex Karras and some players resented the foreign kickers. Previously Wayne Walker a line backer kicked extra points and short field goals. It wasn’t taken as a serious part of the game.
I’m not sure whether we’re talking about the same thing or not. The standard soccer kick, as I’m describing it, is the instep drive. It’s hit with the inside part of the laces, but it is kicked on the laces.
Here’s a source. Maybe I’m not understanding you correctly. When you say “inside part of the foot,” it makes me think of what’s called the “push pass” on that page. This is not a terribly effective way of shooting the ball, but is great for passing.
Here’s another cite with images. Look at shooting and the diagram that accompanies it. That’s what I’m describing when I described the instep kick.