I mean the use of "with" sounds strange there.
It doesn't sound at all strange to a native speaker.
It's usually used like these examples:
I was with Sylvia at the time.
He lives with his grandmother.
I'm going to France with a couple of friends.
These sentences are good examples, but they exemplify only one particular meaning of
with. In fact, there are several other meanings of the word
with.
"I'm with the ball" kind of means I'm with a round object. That's why I choose the verb "dribble".
I don't really understand what you mean.
Does "with" probably mean to dribble the ball in this context?
Not really, no. In this context, the entire phrase
with the ball at his feet obviously means he's dribbling the ball, yes, but the preposition
with doesn't in itself imply dribbling. In football, tactics differ depending on whether a team as a whole is 'with the ball' or 'without the ball'. This simply means that the team is either
in possession or
not in possession of the ball. It has nothing to do with dribbling. However, in the original context the preposition phrase
at his feet tells us that he is in close control of (i.e., dribbling) the ball. In other words, it's the phrase
at his feet that tells us he's dribbling.
Things can sometimes be confusing when two different preposition phrases are used in conjunction. Consider the following example:
She was dancing with her hands in the air.
In this case, these two phrases are not separable, semantically. This is because
in the air doesn't complement
She but
hands. That is, it isn't she who is in the air but her hands. You can see this easily if you remove the second preposition phrase:
She was dancing with her hands.
Hopefully, you can see that this now has a very different sense. Compare this to:
She was walking with her boyfriend in the street.
In this case, the two preposition phrases are semantically independent. That means that you can remove either phrase without changing the meaning:
She was walking with her boyfriend.
She was walking in the street.
