Terminal touch. Transitive touch.

I watched a U-13 game last weekend and I am still thinking about what the touches were saying.

One kid received the ball cleanly, settled it, looked up, played a pass to a teammate. Good play. Coach happy. Parent happy.

Another kid received the ball and the touch itself was already going somewhere. The ball did not stop. It was on its way. The teammate the second kid passed to was already moving toward the place the touch had implied. The defender was a half-second late.

Same situation. Same skill level, basically. Different category of action.

The first touch was terminal. It stopped at itself. Receive the ball. The next thing — looking up, choosing, passing — was a separate action that started after the first one ended.

The second touch was transitive. It pointed through itself to somewhere on the field. The next action did not have to start. It was already implied by the first one.

A terminal touch ends. A transitive touch continues.

This is, I think, what good coaches mean when they say play through the ball or open up the field on the first touch. Those are technical descriptions of a transitive action. But you can teach the description without teaching the thing. Most academy training teaches the description.

You can tell which one a kid is doing from the sideline. Watch what happens to the next-nearest defender during the touch. If the defender does not move until after the touch is complete, the touch was terminal. If the defender starts to move during the touch, the touch was transitive — the touch contained information the defender had to respond to.

This is also part of why the same player can look so different in two games. Under load, the transitive touch is harder. It requires that the perception of the next moment is already running while the current moment is being executed. When the window collapses, transitive becomes terminal. The kid is still receiving cleanly. He just is not pointing anywhere anymore.