A recent Boise State story highlighted something I have been telling players for years: taking the soccer player out of the kicker is hard.

Not because soccer players are not talented. Not because they do not have strong legs. And not because they cannot become very good football kickers.

It is hard because soccer and football ask the body to solve two different problems. That very subtle difference is where a lot of athletes get stuck.

They come into football thinking that because they can hit a ball hard from a wide, loose, angle in soccer, they should be able to do the same thing on field goals. To some degree this can be true…some of the time.

The first time I tried to kick a football off of a tee, my strong ‘soccer leg’ was able to blast the football down the field. What I began to notice pretty quickly, was that even though the ball seemed to explode off my foot most of the time, it sure didn’t look like the same kick over and over again.

I quickly noticed patterns emerging….sometimes the ball was ‘clean’ and rotated end over end, sometimes, it wasn’t.

Sometimes it traveled in a fairly straight line, but often it seemed to ‘hook’ or ‘curve’ as it came off of my foot. If I tried to swing harder to make the ball go further, my foot could easily make a bad connection and send the ball rotating quickly but falling short.

The lesson took years for me to grasp in those days. Football kicking is not just about force. It is about direction, timing, contact, and repeatability.

That is the part many soccer players do not understand at first.

A soccer background can absolutely be an advantage.

Most soccer players already have good leg speed, coordination, ball awareness, and confidence striking with their foot. That is a great starting point. In fact, many young kickers come from soccer and develop quickly once they understand football-specific mechanics.

But the same background can also create some of the biggest problems.

In soccer, a player often approaches from a wider angle, opens the body more, and swings across the ball to create movement, lift, or bend. That works in soccer because the job is different.

By that, I mean that we are often trying to launch the ball with that extra hip torque (think of a goalkeeper distributing the ball to midfield). Since our target (teammate) will move to the ball on the other end of our kick, we don’t need to be nearly as precise with that flight path.

In football, those same habits can create inconsistency.

A field goal needs a more controlled path to the ball. The strike has to move downfield. The body has to stay organized. And the swing has to hold up under pressure.

That is why a player with a “huge leg” can still struggle to become a reliable football kicker.

The biggest mistake is simple:

They try to kick the football the way they used to kick a soccer ball.

That usually shows up in a few ways:

• an attack angle that is too wide
• a chest that opens too early
• a leg swing that wraps instead of driving through the target
• a mindset built around trying to hit the ball harder.

This is where many former soccer players get fooled. They hit one big ball in practice and think they are close. But one long kick does not mean the movement is sound.

I have seen plenty of athletes who can blast a football 50-plus yards and still be unreliable in the range that actually matters most. If the body is out of sequence, the inconsistency will show up sooner or later.

And usually it shows up in the makeable part of the field right when the coach was counting on that ‘easy’ three points.

This is one of the hardest lessons for soccer players to accept.

Trying harder (swinging harder) does not automatically produce a better football kick.

In fact, the opposite is often true.

When players chase power with no pattern based foundation, they usually add tension.

The body gets tight and contracts, the timing changes. Contact gets less reliable and falls off. What looked powerful in their head becomes inefficient in real life.

That is why I constantly tell kickers that power is not the goal. Efficient contact is the goal.

When the approach is clean, the body stays connected, and the strike gets through the ball the right way, the ball jumps. Real range comes from efficient mechanics, not from muscling the kick.

This is also why the transition from soccer player to football kicker is rarely instant. You are not just teaching a new drill. You are changing years of muscle memory.

For many players, the old soccer movement still feels natural, athletic, and powerful. So even when they understand the correction, they keep drifting back to the old pattern when the kick gets longer or the pressure increases.

That is normal. It does not mean the player is not talented. It means he has to rebuild what “normal” feels like in the football swing.

That process takes repetition, feedback, and discipline.

If you are a soccer player entering football, here is the truth:

• Your leg strength is probably not your main issue.
• Your main issue is whether your movement fits the job.
• Do not judge a kick by how hard it felt.
• Judge it by how clean the contact was.
• Do not assume one long make means you are game-ready (recreational golfers also occasionally connect with the driver….so what?)
• Do not confuse range with consistency.
• Do not rely on soccer instincts when football demands a different strike.

The players who improve the fastest are the ones who stop trying to prove how powerful they are and start learning how to become repeatable.

That is when they really begin to develop.

The lesson here is simple. A soccer background can help a player become a football kicker, but only if he is willing to stop leaning on the habits that no longer serve him.

Football kicking is not about swinging harder, opening more, or trying to overpower the ball. It is about strike quality, body control, tempo, and repeatability.

That is why taking the soccer player out of the kicker is hard. But that is also why the athletes who make the adjustment can separate themselves in a big way.

Because once they stop chasing power and start learning how to strike a football like a true football kicker, everything begins to clean up.