Watch any club player slide on clay and you will see the same thing: the outside foot lands, the knee locks, and the slide stops dead about three inches short of the ball. The shot that follows is a reach rather than a stroke.
The fix is not in the feet. It is in deciding to slide one step earlier, which means reading the ball’s depth rather than its direction. We drill it with a cone placed where the slide should begin, not where it should end.
Give it a fortnight of squad sessions and the change shows up in the footage before it shows up in the scoreline. Players usually notice it first as less soreness the day after.
