Soccer Drills – Page 57

Eleven soccer coaching games that help improve passing skills

Pressure passing

Set up a circle of cones about 10m in diameter (you can use the centre circle).

One player stands in the middle, the rest space themselves out equally around the edge of the circle. The player in the middle receives the ball from a player on the edge, controls it, turns and passes to another player. As soon as he or she passes the ball out, a second ball is played in from the edge of the circle. As soon as this ball is passed out to a player on the edge of the circle the first ball is played in again and so on.

The central player has to run quickly backwards and forwards to provide passes to the rest of the circle.

Swap players after one minute.

Stress the importance of good, crisp and accurate passing. Insist the central player gets their head up and looks at the target.

Vary the game by only allowing two touches, then one touch.

Played properly, this is an intensive and fun workout.

Keep Away ring

Players pair up and stand across from each other around a circle of cones. One player or coach stands inside the circle and tries to intercept passes made between the players. Passes made between the players count as goals. Change the players in the circle after a pass is intercepted or after a short time.

Cone Game

Players pair up and stand across from each other around a circle. Set up 6 or 8 cones in the middle of the circle as targets. Players try to knock over the cones in the middle with accurate passes.

Triangle Pass

Set up a three player triangle. Each group has one ball. Players try to pass around the triangle shape. Make sure they reverse the direction of the passes from time to time.

After a certain level of proficiency is reached, add a defender to try and intercept the passes.

Four Corner Pass

Set up a 10 yd. x 10 yd grid with cones at each of the corners. Four players work with one ball, one on each side of the grid. A fifth player defends inside the grid.

Players may only run on their sides of the grid between the cones. They then attempt to pass the ball across the grid. Change the middle defender frequently.

Star Wars

This classic game is very exciting for younger players. Set up a 10 yd. x 20 yd. grid. Have all players’ line up at one end prepared to run to the other end. The coach or player stands just outside the grid with several balls at the ready.

On command the players attempt to run to the endline while evading balls kicked at them by the coach. All shots should be kept below waist level. Players hit by shooting balls become additional shooters until only one player is left.

Basic passing

Split the team up into partners, giving each pair a ball. Have the players pass and trap the ball, while you evaluate their skill. Later, introduce one touch control passing

Circle passing

Many of the basic circle games can be used to practice passing. Try using a circle with two players in the middle trying to intercept passes made by the girls on the outside. The player whose pass is intercepted goes into the middle.

Triangles

This is a good way to reinforce basic passing skills with the added bonus of introducing vision and awareness.

Make some triangles on the field using small cones about ten yards apart.

To start the game, each cone has a player standing next to it. Player 1 passes to player 2 then immediately runs between player 2 and 3. Player 2 passes to player 3 and runs through the gap between player 3 and player 1. And so on.

Done properly, this is a fast game that reinforces the pass/move combination, makes players look carefully to find their next target and requires good passing technique. Just be careful the players don’t all disappear out of sight!

Relays

The basic practice is A passing to D and running to the back of the line, D passing to B and so on. Practice this for a few minutes (watching for and praising correct technique) then add the requirement that players must shout out the name of the person they are passing to. If they don’t, send them back and make them do it again.

Adding this rule has the following benefits.

It makes the players talk,
It makes them look up to see who they are passing to,
If done at the start of a season, it helps introduce the new girls to each other and breaks down inhibitions.

This game can be made competitive by making the first team to do 30 passes the winner.

Many variations are possible – go from two touch to one touch, for example.

Three ball keepaway

Start with two teams of equal numbers and three soccer balls. On your signal, players try to possess as many balls as possible.

On your second signal the play stops and the team in possession of two or more balls wins that round. Repeat several times.

In this game, players must be good passers of the ball to keep possession. They must also make decisions on where to run when they don’t have the ball, when to pass or dribble, and whom to pass to.

Dynamic passing

One of the most common errors young soccer players make is to stand still and wait for the ball to reach them rather than moving towards the pass (or ‘checking’ to the ball).

Failure on the part of receivers to move towards the ball allows defenders to put them under pressure before they’ve had a chance to get the ball under control. In turn, this usually results in receivers kicking the ball away in a panic as they sense the defender closing on them. The team loses momentum as the ball is given away unnecessarily and the football looks messy and unattractive.

This very simple exercise (taken from the useful Youth Soccer Coach site) helps engrain the habit of moving towards a pass rather than waiting for the ball to come to you.

In the diagram below, the blue crosses represent players A and B and the red ‘donuts’ are cones.

Player A passes to the cone beside player B.

Player B is told to receive the ball before it reaches the cone, control it and pass it back to the cone next to player A.

Repeat, encouraging accuracy and good weight of pass.

Recognise effort and good technique.

A number of variations are possible, simply by adding cones and asking players to run between them or adding players and asking all the players to pass and move simultaneously.

Theory into practice

In the SSG (small sided game) at the end of your practice session, watch out for players checking to the ball or passing into space and praise them.

Five ball control games for young soccer players

By Rich Fabrizio at GotSoccer.com

We have all seen it – a team masterfully knocking the ball around ad nauseam but accomplishing very little. Suddenly, one or two defenders close down an attacker, there is a miscue – a poorly weighted pass or a poor receiving angle – a defender picks off a pass and there is a counterattack, most likely resulting in a goal. This type of ball possession can be very boring or very exciting, depending on which team you are playing.

Here are a few exercises gleaned from various local and international coaches aimed at improving ball control and encouraging possession with a purpose – scoring goals!

Warm-up

Light jogging, juggling, Coervers, free-form passing in 3s – interspersed with stretching. Emphasize the stretching.

Dutch Game

3 teams (example; 5 reds. 5 blues, and 5 whites) in a 40×30 yard area – adjust grid to size of teams – playing 10v5, 8v4 or 6v3. Two teams (red and blue) play keep away from the other team (white). See how many consecutive passes you can complete. If a red player loses the ball to a white player, the whites and blues play against the reds, and so on. You can progress from unlimited touches to 3 touches, 2 touches and then one touch.

Emphasize sharp, crisp, accurate, and properly weighted passing, off the ball runs, good passing and receiving angles, and good communication. Players should keep their heads up and look long, medium and then short for passing opportunities. Avoid continuous passing around the perimeter of the grid. Encourage players to check into the middle of the grid to become target players. Some of the Dutch professional teams use this as a warm-up.

Barcelona

More and more teams are shifting from man-to-man defending to zonal defending. In order to disrupt these zonal defenses, teams have found it necessary for their players to be able to make sharp, accurate passes to teammates across the pitch to quickly change the point of attack. When Johan Cruyff was at Barcelona, they incorporated this exercise into their training. In an area slightly larger than the penalty area, or larger rectangular area (depending on skill level and success rate), play 8v8 keep-away with the restriction that no pass can be less than 15 yards or 20 yards (pick one). Count the number of consecutive passes. All passes should be played as hard as possible to receiving players – almost to the point of blasting it across the ground. Players will be forced to get into receiving positions and to make good first touch receptions. Again, you can progress from unlimited touches to 3 touch, 2 touch and then a final one-touch melee. At first this will not go well and balls will be flying everywhere. Be patient and stay with it. You will be amazed at the energy level this creates, the first touch control the players develop, the crispness of the passing. Also, the players will quickly learn they have to think well ahead of every pass.

Emphasize: (1) long, crisp ground passes; (2) getting into receiving and supporting positions quickly; and (3) good first touch control – relax the foot; (4) good communication.

Prisoner

In a 40×30 yard grid with a 2×3 yard grid in the center of the larger grid. Two teams of equal players.

Team A puts a player in the small center grid and scores a goal every time the ball is played into the center grid player and back out again to a Team A teammate (ground passes, volleys, headers all count as goals if successfully played back out to a Team A player). Team B tries to keep Team A from scoring. Team B scores a goal if it completes 5 consecutive passes. Team A tries to disrupt Team B and intercept passes. Reverse the teams.

Danish Game – With Neutral Players

In a 60×30 yard or 60×40 yard grid with 5 yard end zones at each end of the grid. Neutral players occupy the end zones (they can be field players or GKs); no challenges in the end zone. Two teams (red and blue) play up and down the length of the grid possessing the ball as much as possible. Either team (in this example, red team) scores a goal when it successfully gains possession, travels to either end zone A or B (for this example end zone A), makes a successful pass into the end zone to the neutral player, receives a return pass (to any player on the passing team), then travels back to end zone B, makes and receives a return pass, and then travels back to end zone A and makes and receives a return pass. After you intercept a pass, you can attack either end zone A or end zone B (it doesn’t matter in which direction you start), but in order to score a goal, you must traverse the grid to the opposite end zone, and return to the original end zone where you started (ABA or BAB). Players may also use neutral players at either end zone for back passes to relieve pressure. Emphasize ball possession while traversing the area. You can work on one-twos, wall passes, takeovers, and selling dummies, all with the purpose of going forward. Look long, medium and short. GKs can participate in the end zones or on the pitch using both their hands and feet.

Danish Game – Without neutral players

Same game only with empty end zones; a team has to send a player into the end zone to receive and return a pass; no challenges in the end zone – repeat at both ends as before to score a goal.

Cool-down

Set up a 12×9 yard grid: place discs at 3 yard intervals along the 12 yard length, and then place discs at 3 yard intervals across the width. Two teams of 6 players each go into the grids as follows.

x x x x x

A B A B

x x x x x

A B A B

x x x x x

A B A B

x x x x x

Team A tries to make accurate passes through Team B to teammates A in the 3^rd grid area. A’s and B’s can interpass or change places only in their grid. A’s and B’s cannot leave their respective grids to receive or intercept passes.

If B’s intercept, B’s try to complete passes through team A to teammates B in the next grid over. Teams compete to complete the most number of passes. Extra players are divided evenly and fill in with their respective teams. Switch A’s and B’s grid positions.

Losing team does slow shuttles while picking up a disc on each shuttle. Winning team starts stretching and is joined later by losing team.

Team stretches together.

Dribble through the gate

Age group: 8 and up

Number of players: whole team

Equipment: flat cones, bibs (two colours)

The first thing to do is start with a warm up for this drill. Set a number of gates up throughout half of the field like below. Each gate should be 2 yards wide (a gate is imply two cones set up as things to go through such as a goal)

In the image on the left, the x’s are cones

Have half the players wear white and the other half blue. Have a white and a blue player match up with each other with one ball per pair. This is simply a 1v1 game where the players try to score points by dribbling through as many gates as they can.

The white player starts with the ball and tries to score as often as possible in the first one minute half. If the blue player wins the ball, then she tries to score goals.

The only restriction is that the players can NOT dribble through the same goal two times in a row. After a one minute half, they rest (and stretch) for a minute, then play the second half with the blue player starting with the ball. With a team of 16 players, there will be 8 games of 1v1 going on at the same time. This will encourage the players to dribble with their heads up (or run into each other). At the end of the second half, you might let the winner rest for a minute while the loser does some type of “punishment” such as a couple of push-ups.

The key is to turn this into a very competitive match. The next game should feature a white winner matching up with a blue winner and also have the losers match up with each other. You can do this three times and get a very strenuous work out going which will continue into the next drill.

The next progression of this series (which will begin to work with spacing and switching fields) is set up the exact same way with the gates remaining the same. It’s essentially the same game with the major change being that there is only one ball for the whole team. Now it’s all of the whites against all of the blues. In order to score a goal, the ball must be passed through a gate and received by a teammate. Those are the only rules that need to be explained.

Start them off playing a 6 minute game with a 1 minute break at “halftime”. This break is very important because typically, the first 3 minutes of this drill is dreadful. It has been my experience that players will try to dribble to a gate and then pass the ball through to a teammate who inevitably is marked up. During this one minute break, explain to the players that it actually takes 3 players to score a goal and not just the two they are trying to use (the player with the ball and the target through the gate). The three players are the player with the ball, and then two other player who are working together to find an open gate. Once they find an open gate, the player with the ball can drive (or chip) the ball to one of these open players who then play it through the gate to the other one).

Once they start to think in terms of needing three players to score a goal and that two of them must find an open (or unmarked) gate, then they will start to experience success in this game.

As the players get accustomed to this game, they will get more comfortable with playing with their heads up and looking to players who have proper support and spacing.

Double defending

Objectives:

To practice correct defensive stance.

To practice closing down and holding up.

To demonstrate how effective support defending can be.

To help attackers make decisions over trying to push and go past a defender.

Description:

I have a 30yd x 20yd grid marked our for training purposes, internally marked to create 4 x 15yd x 10yd grids. This activity can involve up to 16 players at a time as each pair of teams (offensive & defensive) work longitudinally through one half of the 30 x 20 grid.

Have 3 or 4 players line up at one end of the grid (30yds long but only 10yds wide – i.e. half of the whole grid), each with a ball. They must each, in turn, try and dribble past the approaching defender and stop the ball on the opposite end line to score a point.

Have 3 or 4 players line up at the opposite end of the grid without a ball. These defenders must close down the attacker as quickly as possible and try and hold him/her up, kicking the ball away if possible (no slide tackling is allowed).

Although the defensive players usually do ok at first, the quicker and more skilful attackers start to push the ball past the defenders (often through their legs as they try and get used to the open legged stance)and have more success.

After the attackers have had perhaps three attempts at beating the defenders I then let the next defender in line support the first defender. I usually demonstrate the technique one or two times, showing how talking to the first (pressure) defender helps. The success rate of the defenders soars thus highlighting the benefit of good support (double) defending.

When an attacker has been ‘seen off’ the pressure defender goes to the back of his line, his support defender becomes the next pressure defender and the third player in line becomes the support defender. This prevents pairs of players getting used to just defending with each other.

3 points can be scored by the defensive team if they manage to force the attacker all the way back to his/her end line. It is surprising how forceful some players get when they realise how effective this teamwork can be.

This activity also helps attackers realise that pushing the ball past one defender is not going to be as effective if there is a supporting defender close by. Therefore, if they are getting their head up early, they can make much more incisive decisions on when to ‘go for it’ on their own and when to pass to a team mate.

Don’t let the ball stop!

Suitable for all ages.

Play in groups of 6 or 8.

Set up

Mark out a short, wide pitch with big (10m wide) goals at either end and a centre line

Divide the players into two teams of 3 or 4.

Each team defends a goal.

How it works

the game starts with each team spread out in their half of the pitch. The coach stands on the centre line and rolls a football to one of the teams. Their objective is to score a goal by shooting from within their own half.

Rules

No goalies.

Players must stay in their own half of the pitch at all times.

Each player on the team must touch the ball at least once before a shot can be taken.

The ball must not be allowed to stop – if it does, possession is passed to the other team.

Progression

restrict players to three, two or one touch.
shoot with their ‘wrong’ foot
challenges
can they work the ball up to the half way line without letting it stop and only having 1, 2 or 3 touches each?
can they lay off a good ball into the path of the shooter?
can they block shots with their body and gain immediate control of the ball?
will anyone stand on the half way line and get in the way of their opponents shots?

Cross the ball!

The big mixed bag practice that you can see at the bottom of this page is suitable for 12-14 players who have the power and technique to cross the ball from the sides of a full sized pitch.

The medium mixed bag, below, is more suitable for smaller numbers and/or younger players. It is useful for three reasons:

We can never do too much practice on crossing, but we have to modify crossing practice according to age, ability and numbers.

Younger players cannot cross from the flanks of a full field, but should be encouraged to do so with a modified field.

For older players 14-years of age and upwards there are times when a coach would like to work on crossing, but may only have 9 or 10 players at practice on any given evening.

Medium mixed bag

Objective:

To encourage young players to think more about using the width of the field.
To develop crossing skills and to look to finish (or defend) attacks from the flanks.

Organization:

Mark in an area 36 yards long (two penalty areas long) by 30 yards wide and then further extend the width with a 6-yard channel on either side. For older players (13+) go wider; younger players (U 11 and less) make it narrower.
Put in a half way line, but not in the channel.
Play 2 Attackers vs. 1 Defender and a goalkeeper in each half or whatever the numbers allow you.
There are two neutral “crossers” of the ball – one on each flank.
Keep a supply of balls in each net.
Goalkeeper at one end starts by throwing the ball out to one of the “crossers” (wingers).
The wingers play a cross in towards the goal.
If the defender or the goalkeeper gets the ball they play out to one of the two wingers and the attack goes the other way.
At younger ages try to rotate all players at intervals – possibly through all positions.
Use the offside law to prevent attackers standing in front of the goalkeeper.

Teaching:

Encourage an accurate thrown ball from the keeper to the winger.

Wingers should aim to cross the ball towards the far post with a hard driven pass or a lofted pass.

The wingers should also aim the ball to split the difference with the cross in between the defender and the goalkeeper.

Attackers should go away from the crosser and then come in as the ball is played in – one to the near post area the other to the far post.

Defender and goalkeeper have to work well together as the defender cannot man-mark two attackers.

Goalkeeper should take charge and organize the defender(s).

Big mixed bag

Objectives

To place field players and goalkeepers in decision-making situations with attacks developed from the flanks.

Organization

Use half of a full-sized field. Mark out a 6-yard channel each side of field.
Use cones/flags at the half if you don’t have a portable goal.
Mark in a centre line.
The one or two players in each “flank channel” have no allegiance, they play for both teams. 3 vs. 2, plus a goalkeeper, in each half.
When the goalkeeper has the ball, the practice is always re-started by goalkeeper throwing to flank players.
Flank players can pass to one another, overlap, cross the ball or pass the ball into the 3 attackers.
If on their own, take it and cross it.
Change the players’ positions periodically to give everyone experience in different roles (except goalkeepers).
Offside rule in each zone should be applied by coach.

Coaching Points

Goalkeepers must work on good quality throws to wide players, and be encouraged to “switch” play.

Goalkeepers must communicate their requirements, organize the defence and adjust to changing situations.

Quality of cross from wing players critical for successful attacking play.

Three attackers in each half need to communicate and work “off” one another, with particular attention to “near-post” and “far-post” runs.

The two defenders in each half have to work skilfully because they are outnumbered.

Challenge

For the “wingers” to deliver quality crosses; for the rest to outmanoeuvre the opposition.

Corner kick game

This is a good transition game. I stole it from the 1994 Vol. 2, #12 issue of Soccer Coaching. The article was by Roby Stahl.

The game is played on a half field with 2 goals and goalkeepers. Two teams of 8 divide up into groups of four. A large number of balls are split up to the four corners. The game is 4v4 with the remaining 4 players from each team positioned at the corners of their team’s attacking goal. Each game lasts 4 minutes and the “corner” players exchange positions with the field players.

Every time the ball goes out of play, the team that just gained possession is awarded a corner kick at their attacking goal. That means they must sprint to their penalty area and try to execute a quick corner-kick before the defending team reacts. If the GK gets the ball, he is to distribute as quick as possible, hoping to find a breakaway situation.

There is no off-side. We started play with a GK distribution. After a score, we transitioned to the other goal for a corner-kick. Another option would be for the beaten GK to distribute to his teammate to restart play.

Coaching Points:

encourage high work rate (sprinting)
emphasis on quick, but accurate corner kicks
look to recognize first player who opens space for himself
make defenders sprint back to their goal after losing the ball out of bounds
emphasis on aggression in the box
emphasis on quick transitions from defence to offence and offence to defence