I asked 100 Footballers for their Secret Football Hacks

In this video I asked 100 footballers for their secret football tips and I got responses from a Ballon d'Or winner, Premier League players and even someone who's currently playing in the Euros. And I'm going to try all these strange tips out for myself and see if they actually work. Right, so there's three possible ways that I'm going to get responses from these players. Number one is to use direct message, number two is to use cameo video messages and number three is to meet them in person. So I've got my phone here, let's get to work. Right, obviously Mbappe, what is your best secret football advice? Obviously we've got to do Messi. Sergio Ramos, we've got to do a defender to get those defensive tips. Obviously Haaland, what's your best advice for scoring more goals? So I spent the next few hours messaging a load of footballers. So the first response was a really good one and it came from someone who growing up was my favourite player and that is Michael Owen. He's a Ballon d'Or winner so any tips he has will be absolutely golden. Let's see what I need to try out. Kieran, hiya mate, Michael Owen here. Hopefully I can give you a little bit of advice but football has got to be absolutely something that you live and breathe. You can't just think, oh I'll practice today or I'll do an hour here or there. Literally every moment of the day you'll be thinking about it, you'll be watching it, you'll be practising. After talking about the importance of football becoming a way of life he then suggested a practical tip that I could try out for myself. Of course if you can use both feet it's a huge help but not just to kick the ball. If you can manipulate the ball with both your good foot and your bad foot so trying Cruyff turns, trying little drag backs, little cutbacks then you'll be a much, much better player. So good luck. So Michael Owen suggested training with my weak foot. He said I should try manipulating the ball and really getting comfortable using my weak foot. So that's exactly what I did. It's going to need some work. I focused on drag backs and turns. Even throwing a few keep ups in there. And obviously I had to finish the session on some weak foot shooting. So the first tip of the day was fantastic advice. But this next footballer suggested some, let's say, more unusual tips. Later on in the video I'll be testing out the secret tips that I received from John Terry and Granit Xhaka. And I'll also show you a secret tip from Leo Messi himself. But first, this is Ryan Tafferzali from Wickham Wanderers. And I sent him a message asking him for some of his lesser known football advice. He came back with some very interesting responses. First up he suggested a tip for improving ball control. He said try doing keep ups without spinning the ball. So if you watch me do keep ups, the ball is spinning quite a lot, right? But he suggests trying to do it without the ball spinning. And this really helps improve your control of the ball. This means you've got to put extra effort into every touch on the ball and should improve your control. You know what, that's a great tip. He also suggested doing sprints to improve explosive speed. He told me about the 4-7-8 military breathing method to help for better sleep and recovery. It's basically breathing in for 4 seconds, holding for 7 seconds and then breathing out for 8 seconds. Which is a technique that the military use for relaxation. And finally he said that you can improve your weak foot by visualisation. Now this seems a little hard to believe, but let me explain. If you visualise yourself doing a cross field pass with your weak foot, it doesn't feel very smooth. This method involves visualising in your head you kicking the ball with your weak foot over and over again. And try and make the motion in your mind as smooth as possible. And then over time, this should translate to your ability on the pitch. And to be fair, after trying this out for a little while, it did feel a bit smoother. So these methods get a thumbs up from me. Now a little while ago, I asked James Ward-Prowse for his best hacks for when it comes to scoring more free kicks. After smashing 5 free kicks top bins, this is what he had to say. We don't get many free kicks in games, so I try and limit the amount I take to try and put a bit more pressure on it. Yeah, I try and take maybe 6 to 8 a week and just leave it at that. Now, I don't know about you, but I was very surprised just how little he practices. But either way, I headed down to the pitch for what is probably the shortest practice session of my life. So as you can see, I've got 8 balls here and also a wall. I've got 8 free kicks to practice today. I guess the reason behind limiting yourself to only 8 shots is to create that pressure of a game-like scenario. So after taking my 8 free kicks, the session was over. I think this tip only really works when you're as good as James Ward-Prowse himself. In my opinion, nothing beats consistent repetition. Next up, I wanted to take a look at a game that the England team have been using in their training for the Euros. It's a little hack for improving reactions. The coach will call out different body parts until eventually they shout ball and it's the first player that grabs the football wins. Toes. Shoulders. Knees. Toes. Ball. This is a fun little tip for improving your reaction speed and I'd recommend giving it a go yourself. But next up, I asked Wrexham goalie Mark Howard for his lesser known football tips. I received a long message with a load of interesting ideas to try out. First, he suggested warming up using resistance bands. This is a good way to ease yourself into a hard training session. Next up, he suggested drinking tonic water as it's supposed to stop you from cramping up on the pitch. I've never heard of this one before and it sounded promising, but after doing some research, it looks like it's a bit of a myth and doesn't actually work. Mark also suggested a great tip if you want to take your recovery to the next level. He said that footballers will weigh themselves before and after a game. This shows how much water they've lost from sweating, which can be up to 5kg. So weighing themselves means that they know exactly how much fluid they need to take on board to rehydrate themselves properly. Some great tips from Mark there. But next up, I received a message from a former Manchester United player, Louis Saha. Let's see what secret tip he suggested I try out. Hey Kieran, it's Louis Saha. Hope you're good. The best advice I can give you is to always stay positive. You should really focus on staying very, very little time with the mistakes that you have made. Big pros do mistakes all the time, but they don't stay very long. They just think about the next thing that they're going to do, you know, approaching positively. So that's my best advice. So this is a great tip for the mental side of football. He said you should always think positively and spend as little time as possible worrying about any mistakes you've made on the pitch. If you miss a penalty, forget about it and move on. This is honestly fantastic advice. But next up, let's see what Messi replied. So now the big one. What did Lionel Messi reply to my Instagram DM? Well, he must have been really busy last week because I didn't get anything back. So come on, Leo, you are better than that. No, but seriously, I couldn't make this video without including a tip from the best footballer to ever do it. So I decided to find one out for myself. Yeah, there was obviously a lot to choose from, but I wanted to get a lesser known tip from the best footballer on the planet. And I found something fairly interesting that most people probably don't know about. So, yeah, check it out. So if you follow Messi on social media, you may have noticed that he's often holding this strange looking cup. But what's inside? Well, that would be Yerba Mate tea. It's a very popular drink in South America and is consumed by a lot of footballers. And it's thought to have some pretty impressive benefits. It's said to improve physical performance and increase energy levels. So I decided to try it out for myself. Right, so I've made some of the Yerba Mate tea and I've got the cup here. Let's try it out. And you know what? It tastes pretty good. OK, so before we move on to the rest of the footballers in this video, there is another way that I wanted to try and get some more unique, lesser known secret football advice. And that is to ask AI and see what they suggest. Right, so I'm going to ask AI what are some secret football tips I can try out. And let's see what they say, because this could be very interesting. So it instantly delivered me loads of results. And these are the secret football hacks that AI suggested trying. Practice double touches, having two touches of the ball in quick succession. Set up targets to improve accuracy. For better hand-eye coordination for goalkeepers, practice juggling small balls. Do box jumps to improve explosive speed. Work on no-look passes to deceive opponents. Watch videos of pro footballers to learn from them. Use a wall to practice one-touch passes. This will improve control. And this is a technique that I've seen Phil Foden use a lot. And finally, train weighted passes. So overall, I'd actually say they came up with some pretty decent football tips. But next up, we move on to someone who's won the Champions League and the Premier League. But what football tip did he suggest I try out? Kieran, hello mate. It's John Terry here. I hope all is well. And the best bit of advice I could probably give you, mate, would be a couple of bits. First and foremost would be to look at your weaknesses and work on those as an individual. I think identify those of where you're weak and the areas you are weak. And then put the hard work in. Don't expect instant results, because that's not going to be the case. That takes weeks, probably months as well, to kind of improve. So don't expect things to turn around overnight, because they certainly won't. And I think most importantly, training as you play is the big thing for me. So whether it's a training session for Chelsea or an FA Cup final or a Champions League game, I trained like I played. They're the best bits of advice I could give you, mate. I wish you all the best. So some great advice from John Terry there. One of the best Premier League defenders of all time. He emphasised the importance of training as you play with high intensity. But he also said that I need to work on areas where I'm weak. And for that, there are many. So I prepared myself for a long session. My headers are for sure a weak point, so I worked on them first. Now, honestly, this might seem like obvious advice, but it's probably one of the most useful advice of the video, because people don't really like training their weak areas. So you do kind of avoid it. And if anything, that's what you need to train the most. So another area where I'm weak would be controlling the ball on my chest. So let's do that. As this is another weak point. Now, as John Terry said, you can't expect the results from training to come overnight. But with consistent practice, you'll see massive amounts of improvement. And finally, we have some advice from Granit Xhaka, who's all round a fantastic player. Now, I'll just leave you with this great advice for any aspiring footballers out there. Hey Kieran, Granit here. I hope you're doing well. Advice about training skills. My biggest advice is the work, the mindset. To be always clean, clear, what you want to do. The hard work pays off one day for sure. So give everything, keep working, keep believing in yourself. And I'm sure that you can achieve something.