On November 13th, 2021, I had the absolute pleasure to train with one of the only Sri Lankan professional football players, Waseem Razeek. It was a combined session with me, my coach, Mr. Razeek, and a few fellow players from TAFA. During the session we worked on different areas of the game. First was footwork and passing, where we broke a sweat moving the ball as a group. By analyzing Razeek, I noticed that he was barely sweating by the end which was because he made no unnecessary movements, nothing extra, just enough to get the job done. After that was shooting drills. The difference in our level was really shown here, where Razeek was consistently hitting the target and scoring, whilst we were less consistent. A proud moment for me was when it came to weak foot shooting, in which I performed almost as good if not better than Waseem. This is because becoming better with my left foot is something that I have been working on a lot since I play the position of left-winger on the pitch. We ended the session with dribbling drills and this is where Razeek really showed why he was a professional. The ball stuck to him like glue when dribbling, really showing his ball mastery. It was clear that he was levels beyond any of us when it came to “knowing the ball”.
I learnt a lot from this session and am inspired to work on different areas of my game to improve. One key area is ball mastery and agility. In the future I am planning on purchasing agility ladders and cones so that I can really master my footwork and get to know the ball better (in terms of ball mastery and control).
