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THE WORDis MLSsoccer.com's weekly long-form series. This week, senior writer Jeff Bradley speaks with some of the best goalscorers in Major League Soccer history to determine which factors matter most when defining those precious few players blessed with the skill and the obsession to put the ball in the back the net, over and over again.

You go a game or two without a goal, and you start to think youll never score again.

Taylor Twellman, who scored 101 goals during his eight-year career with the New England Revolution, pauses for a second before continuing, as if he needs a moment to himself.

I think all guys who are paid to score know the feeling, he says. Lying awake at night, agonizing about it all day, your food tasting like cardboard. Its awful.

To overcome the anxiety, Twellman would stay after practice to do extra work. Not extra sprints or heading drills. This was the mental work every goalscorer seems to put in. For Twellman, this meant standing in front of an empty goal, and from a range where he could not possibly miss, firing the ball in. Over and over.

No matter what kind of practice I'd just had, I wanted it to end with me seeing the ball hit the net, Twellman says. I always wanted a mental picture of what it looked like.

Ante Razov, Major League Soccers fourth all-time scorer, had a similar ritual.

I was like a jump shooter in basketball with his two or three favorite spots on the floor, Razov says. Id go to those spots, in and around the box, and try to put shots into places where I knew they could not be saved. Upper corners, lower corners, spin it both ways. In a game, I wanted to feel like I could hit those spots with my eyes closed.

And Chris Wondolowski, whose 27 goals in 2012 famously tied the MLS single-season goalscoring record, sometimes actually does away with the ball.

Its very personal, the San Jose Earthquakes forward says of his routine. Its visualization. Sometimes, I just walk around the box and try to see myself scoring a goal.

Excerpt from:
Inside the meticulous, manic mind of the MLS goalscorer | THE WORD