Ian Wright’s amazing shooting drill shows just how talented professional footballers really are!
We all like to think we could have gone pro in football if we hadn’t injured our knee at 14, which slowed us down. Every football fan has probably said that, whether joking or seriously. But let’s be real—there’s a reason so few people actually make it to the professional level.
Ian Wright recently showed a shooting drill that proves why the idea some of us have—that there’s little difference between fans and pros—is just wishful thinking.
Wright, a former Arsenal striker, was famous for being a top goal scorer. Over his career, he scored 324 goals in 626 games for clubs like Arsenal, Crystal Palace, and West Ham United. Now, he’s sharing a tough shooting drill that shows why he was so deadly in front of goal, and why most people wouldn’t cut it as pros.
A part of his biography talked about how he practiced hard. The tweet explained that many people think just aiming near the goal and testing the goalkeeper is good enough. But Wright proved he became a great striker because he spent hours practicing with real focus—not just trying to score, but aiming for specific spots in the net every time.
He said, “I’d shoot from different angles and distances, chip it, curl it… all that. After a while, I didn’t just want to score, but to hit the side netting, then clip the post before hitting the side netting. I spent hours curling it into tiny spaces, focusing on areas as small as four squares of the net.”
Wright’s words really show what sets pros apart: dedication and the exact precision needed to excel in the sport.
He was known as a natural finisher, just like some other Premier League stars. For example, Alan Shearer is the league’s top scorer with 260 goals, but he wasn’t always called a “natural”—he was just unstoppable in front of goal.
Names like Liverpool legend Robbie Fowler often come to mind when we think of natural finishers. Many former players say he was one of the most natural goal scorers in the league.
Another one was Henrik Larsson, who only played in the league for a short time but was a teammate of Wright’s. Larsson was known for being incredibly clinical and was admired as one of Europe’s best strikers back in the early 2000s.