thats great and exciting...do you have a local weekly tournament group you can begin to get involved with? there is a lot of information available on this site with practice tips and strategy stuff and its a long read but a good one "Mental Attitude"
http://www.foosball.com/forum/index.php?topic=2485.0here is a basic on practice...you can skim my stuff since i am not a provin top player but i have quotes from the best in the world worth reading on practice
http://www.foosball.com/forum/index.php?topic=1543.0feel free to ask all questions on the board and you can contact me any time and I will pass on what i know
i will give this, which i have not shared here before, but as you are starting out, start right away to discipline your mind that DEFENSE is not about speed...the game on the surface for almost everyone starting out is about speed on speed like two sprinters squaring off...i wish someone had talked to me about this early on so i could develop the right approach
this game is about strategy, baiting, and being or going where you want when you want and not when it is dictated to you. the natural human tendency is to move when the offensive player moves but defense is about making the offensive player do what you want and disrupting their mental process
if you can get a player to think about different things and to start having to guess where your men might be and when they might be there and make them believe they can not make you be one place or another, as a defender (any rod) then you are already winning the battle
much more to be said on this subject if you want to pursue it but for now, lets just think real basic with you playing goalie...there is more to it than this, but to start, lets just divide the goal into 3 equal parts and think that you can have 2 men in front of the goal...those two men if they are standing in the middle of any one of those 3 holes will keep the other player from scoring (most of the time...again, basics here) so, as a defender, you want to be in 2 of the 3 holes when you want to
you want to spend more time in the hole the person favors than you spend out of it...
develop nerves of steal and try, even if it means getting scored on a bit more in the beginning, to not twitch or jump when a person shoots...there is a time for this but learning NOT to do this is much harder and takes much more discipline than jumping
always watch the ball and not the man
there, sort of random, I have never tried to write this out...if you want to chat some time, I think I can better explain some of these basics...I have had some good sucess working with beginners on this so I think I can help...it is much easier if we were in person but we need to do what we can
best is if you can find a mature player in your area who can work with you every so often one on one while you try and get what you can online