So I gotta say, manual headers are pretty easy for me. I think so far I'm having a decently realistic success rate.
But I'm quite picky-choosy on my deliveries into the box. I always pick out someone, if I don't see an opportunity, I don't even pass.
4 situations I'm looking for:
- the guy is tall
- the guy is heavy (weight)
- the guy is wide open
- the guy has good movement/run attacking the space
I'm not even sure if jump stat is important, but anyway it just doesn't cross my mind. Coz I'm just looking at my players in the box, and I think, "oh this guy is tall. This guy looks built." I can't see jump stat from physical appearance so I'll take what I can see. Maybe it does, it's just not intuitive for me to do.
Timing:
- it is not when u make contact with the ball (very very last moment)
- it is not earlier the better
- if u think of it like this...pressing a button, changes the animation. when you press [], your animation starts to change. And it goes.... knees bending -> compression force -> jump force released -> heading/contact with ball
So, what I mean is, you have to reverse engineer the time. You have to imagine the time of contact. So now you think about how early you have to compress your jump. Because that's what [] does, it begins the compression of the jump.
If you press [] too early, you lose momentum of your run/approach. So you have to be good at timing it in reverse, budgeting just enough to jump and meet the ball on your head, not more, not less. You can do more or less, but I imagine it could be floaty, you could be leaving that up to stat to decide, I'm not sure.
So here's 1st half of a game where I made 3 powerful headers, all very threatening (@1:35, 5:15, 6:30), in the same half. The players I made these headers with aren't even great at headers? But context and timing plays out correctly so it's nice enough to create a threat.
The final tip:
- Be choosy about your deliveries into the box. I refuse to pass into the box a lot if I can't pick out my runs. It's not good to be sending hopeful balls into the box. It's almost understandable if those crosses aren't met with good headers. Quality over quantity.
- Watch what's going on in the box. Watch for movement/runs. Not every player in the box wants you to cross to them. If they aren't up to it, don't send them.
- Have a habit of not even pressing [], if the cross don't look like it's close enough to cross. I think this helps in having clarity of what exactly is a good opportunity or not. There are crosses I don't even jump for, coz it's just half 1-2 head space away from where I can humanly possibly jump to. That's what I mean by clarity, know your spacing. Having a habit of not jumping unless it's right, kinda makes you very aware of how far you are actually from the incoming ball.
One more thing..
Power: power is another factor that effects timing. The more power you put into it, the more time it takes to compress the jump. If you go for more power, you need to add this to your reverse budgeting of timing (press [] a bit earlier). Just think of it as, you need to bend your knees more to compress a huge jump, that whole animation is going take more time to unfold. Reverse that in timing and you'll know when to press [] (compress your jump).
It's the same as taking a open shot. More power on [], the leg swing is more radical, animation takes longer to unfold, thus you budget the timing earlier.
Almost 99% of my headers is 10% power (just use in incoming force of the cross instead), I don't want to bother with long animations/large motions and timing them out.
Bonus: Full power X header pass from far post, centering the ball @1:19. Look at that big animation and how early I powered up. Also because I cannot use the original incoming force of the cross in this type of situation, so I gotta generate my own power.
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