Category: Tactics

The closer an attacking team gets to the opposition goal the more pressure the defenders will exert on the man in possession in order to prevent him from playing the ball forward. This means that the player on the ball needs support from his team-mates. It is important that the supporting players take up their positions early so that the tightly marked man in possession has the option of passing the ball with his first touch.
This drill helps to teach the basics of supporting play.

Supporting players have to determine two things;

(i) the correct angle of support
(ii) the correct distance of support

By taking up the correct angle and distance the supporting player will achieve:

• a position in which he has a full range of forward vision
• a position in which he receives the ball comfortably
• a position in which he can switch the play
• a position in which he can play the ball forward without being under pressure

Organisation

Area: 30×40
Players: 4 Attackers, 3 Defenders
Equipment: Footballs, Bibs, Markers

Practice

X plays the ball into X1 who is tightly marked by O1

X follows his pass and supports X1

X2 must lose his marker O2 and provide support for X1

X1 lays the ball off to either of the supporting players X or X2

X3 makes a forward run and provides the outlet for the through pass from X or X2

O3 is the recovering defender who tracks the run of X3

X’s must run the ball through the markers to score

Key Points

• Assess the angle and distance of the support positions offered by X and X2
• Assess the timing of the forward run made by X3
• Assess the accuracy, timing and weight of pass played by either X or X2 into the path of X3
• Ensure that O’s defend properly

The players are in a numbers up keepaway exercise.

They are playing in a grid.

The ball is moving, but there still seems to be something wrong with the scene.

Then you realize, the players are all standing in the same area of the grid–there is no player movement.

This is a common occurrence in a numbers up exercise, but you don’t want to have a common team.

By making one adjustment, the coach should see a big difference in the play. Have the passer always move quickly to different space (even if another player is there) after making pass. He can follow the pass or just move to different space. Now the other players who are not receiving the pass need to move to different space to support the football or to make room for the passer to run into. This needs to happen on every pass.

Now your keepaway exercise should be more appealing to the eye and your
team’s ball possession should improve.

“If we do not want a challenge, distort the opponent’s
sense of location.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Ages: 7+: Materials: Cones, balls, bibs: Players: 4+

One of the most important defensive soccer skills which players should learn (even young children) is how to properly mark an opponent so that he does not appear “open” to his teammate. This is a difficult skill for beginning players to learn, because they tend to watch the ball instead of their marks. Furthermore, because it is only necessary to mark your man when your team doesn’t have the ball, younger players can get confused about when to mark and when to get away. As a result, it is necessary to break these skills down into manageable steps, starting with just staying with your man and teaching some tricks on how to do this.

The first basic rules of marking are to be stay within 2-3 feet of your man. Start by putting players in pairs, with one player in each pair as the attacker. It is the job of the attacker to try to get away from his marker, and the job of the marker to stay with his attacker. Do not bother using a ball. Just put the players in a grid and play it like tag. When you blow the whistle, everyone must freeze and any defender who is not within 3 feet of his mark must do a “special exercise”. Pick silly special exercises, like doing a duck walk for 3 steps, quacking “mark, mark, mark”, etc.). Play for several minutes, then switch roles between defenders and attackers. Reinforce the idea that those who are sticking with the opponent are “defenders” and that attackers can go anywhere and should try to lose their marks.

Now, introduce the idea of transition which means the switch from offence to defence when possession is lost. Put bibs on one member of each pair and give them a team name. Also give a team name to the kids without bibs.

Put them back in the grid, and periodically shout out a team name for the kids who are to act as defenders. Require that they find their marks and get within 3 feet of their marks by the count of 2 which requires them to always have a good idea of where their marks are, even when trying to lose them). Once again, use a silly “exercise” for those who do not quickly switch off.

Now, introduce a football and make the team without the ball the defenders. Put small cone goals at the ends of the grid so that each team has a goal to defend. At this point, things will fall apart with new players, as they will start watching the ball and stop watching their marks. Expect this. It is normal. Let them play for 2-3 minutes, and find the kids who have gotten the concept down. These are the kids whom you will name as captains.

Blow your whistle; stop the game; and assign captains for each side. Their jobs are to yell “Rockets, mark” or “Rockets, attack”, depending on whether or not their team has the ball. Always try to have 2 captains for each side, as somebody will get tied up in the excitement and forget to shout instructions.

Play the game again, and watch the transitions. Don’t interfere, just let things sort out for 3-4 minutes. Then, announce a new game, where the entire team has to do a “special exercise” if, when you blow the whistle, they are not marking properly. The use of a team special exercise is important, as you want the entire team to learn to look out for somebody who is not marking his man. This will be crucial in games when, for instance, a defender falls down and it is essential that another player pick up his mark, so get them used to the idea of watching each other.

Let them play for about 1 minute, then blow your whistle. Resume, and blow again when the other side should be marking. Now, play a game where a goal counts for 1 point, and good marking counts for 2 points. Be sure that you give equal chances as you blow your whistle for both sides to get 2 points. At this stage, do not give out any “special exercises” as the loss of the chance for 2 is quite sufficient to get the point across. Additionally, and you don’t want to do anything more to single out the poor kid who messed up.

For younger players, this may be as much as you can handle in one session. However, for older players, you can proceed to the next step, which is learning where to stand in relation to your opponent, assuming that teams are equal in numbers. In general, the safest place for a defender to stand is goal-side AND ball-side of his mark. In the midfield, it is more important to be ball-side than goal-side. When in the penalty box, you normally should be ball-side unless your attacker is considerably faster/quicker in which case you should be goal-side. Inside the goal area, you should always be goal-side if standing still, and ball-side if you are running in towards the goal with your attacker.

By ball-side, we mean that the defender is standing between his mark and the ball, so that the ball cannot “see” the feet of his man. “Ball-side” marking looks like this:

Small Group Work

Put a pair of players in a grid, with one goal at one end, and put another pair in a long narrow grid that runs along one sideline. To score, the team in possession must have passed to a teammate on the sideline, then shot on goal without an interception by the opposing side. The use of the alley forces ball-side marking – and helps to show why it is effective. It also shows the players that, to succeed, they must play to space ahead of or behind the marked teammate and immediately move to accept a quick pass back. In the meantime, once a pass has been made to the outside, it places great urgency upon the inside defender to either intercept the ball before it can come back in or to get between his mark and the goal. Play for about 3-4 minutes, then switch inside and outside players.

Large Group Work

Add another inside player for each team so that they are 2v2 inside, and put a goal at both ends. This is the stage where the players start to learn to balance the defensive principles of Pressure/Cover with the concept of marking. When outside of scoring range, it is more important that the other inside player act as Cover so that, if the Pressure player is beaten, the on-ball attacker does not have a free run at goal. As a result, he will drop off vertically from his man, so that he is goal-side of his mark and also slightly goal-side of the Pressure player. He does this so that he can keep an eye on both. If the Pressure player can bottle up the opponent at the touch line away from the outside support, he will turn his efforts to winning the ball since the opposing inside player should drop back to provide an outlet pass for the beleaguered attacker and also to provide instant cover for his own goal if possession is lost.

However, as the attackers start to come within scoring range, the off-ball inside attacker becomes a much greater threat, so he will close down on him in an effort to be both goal-side and ball-side. He will be sure to choose goal-side if he does not believe that he can stay ball-side on a run towards goal. The outside defender, on the other hand, will generally try to stay ball-side because he knows that the outside player is just a relay person who will try to cross the ball in quickly if he ever gets possession.

After quickly discussing these ways in which marking decisions change as you add a third person, let the players experiment. The game is truly the best teacher for these concepts, as the kids will learn much more quickly from trial and error than by any extended lecture. So, just stand back and watch for at least 5 minutes. Praise good marking decisions and good interceptions, and overlook the poor decisions. To mark well is a skill that will take many years to develop properly, as there are a number of very complex variables that enter into the equation in a split second. Errors are common and the kids can see for themselves when they make an error so give lots of reassurance and encouragement.

Scrimmage

Add an alley on both sides of the field; put a pair of opponents in each alley; and put the rest in the middle. Require that a team must use one set of alley players before scoring and that goals count double if they use both alleys. Then, sit back and enjoy yourself, as the players go about teaching themselves the reasons why good marking is so important.

Minutes: 10-20 Players: 9-18 Ages: 5-99

Objectives: develops team work, communication skills and tactical development (especially transition from defence to attack)

Description: Using cones, set up three goals, 3-4 yds across each on the corner of an equilateral triangle (I put one across each side of the penalty area and one near the centre circle). Divide into three teams, using bibs or shirt colour to distinguish.
soccer coaching drill – three way soccer index

Teams can score on either of the other two goals from the front side or the back side. After a score, the scored upon team dribbles back out from near their goal area.

After just a couple minutes the coach will notice players talking much more. They will also see players start to switch the point of attack from one goal to the other as it opens up, forcing the new target goal team to quickly transition from offence to defence.

Objective

• To develop accurate passing and shooting with both feet, and to gain a simple understanding of corner kicks for players 6 – 8 years old.

Organization (see above diagram)

• Place balls in corners of playing area.
• Coach rolls ball by foot or by hand.
• Coach shouts “Go!” and player at first cone must go around second cone.
• Shooting player retrieves own shot then returns to end of line.
• This increases the activity level and also encourages the shooter not to kick the ball too far, but rather concentrate on the accuracy.
• No goalkeeper, so players practice accurate kicking.
• Change players and cones to opposite side.
• Children leave their ball with the coach on the way back.
• With a large group split into two (with Assistant Coach) and have one group at one end and one at the other.

Teaching Points

• As players become better, narrow the goal or deliver quicker passes.
• Point out that most shots in illustration will be taken with the left foot.
• Total concentration: head down, eyes on the ball.
• Encourage accuracy rather than power shooting.
• Use inside of foot – like a hockey stick.
• Encourage players to strive to become “two-footed.”

Target

• To record the number of the team’s scoring attempts that succeed in 20 shots, and keep score at each practice.

Soccer, although it is played with a ball, is really a game of space and movement without the ball. Unlike some other sports, (baseball, for instance), soccer does not really have positions. Rather, players have differing responsibilities which change as the ball and the other players move about the field. In a strict sense, only the goal keeper really has a “position” to play.

Once your players have attained proficiency in the basic techniques of receiving, passing and shielding a football, you can introduce them to the fact that they will actually only spend a relatively small amount of time (perhaps as little as three or four minutes in every hour) with the ball at their feet.

Your players need to understand that they will actually spend around 90% of every game supporting their team-mate with the ball or moving into a position where they could receive the ball if the player in possession chose to pass. Knowing where they need to be at any given moment of a soccer game is, therefore, just as an important a skill as passing or shooting. Perhaps it is even more important.

There are many games and drills that will allow young soccer players to practice finding the right space and position for themselves on the soccer field.

Equally, there are many that focus on providing support for each other. The simplest of these – keepaway – is used by coaches at every level.

Keepaway, however, can get a bit boring if the only objective is to string as many passes together as possible. This is, after all, not a ‘soccer like’ activity – there is no point in possession without a goal at the end. Children prefer to play games that have an identifiable end result to possession, like the one described below.

Spreading out and positioning

Organisation

Grid is 60 yds x 40 yds
2 players (one at each end) on end lines who must use feet only-targets.
Retain possession until able to deliver ball to target
If successful in delivering ball to target, he returns the ball to the successful team and they attack the other end.
Use one neutral player (shown here in yellow) for both teams.

practicing movement, finding space and support play

Key points

• ‘Spreading’ out as a team when in possession.
• ‘Positioning’ in order to receive the ball in as much space as possible.
• Appropriate controlling touch of the ball.
• Pass forward accurately and sensitively wherever possible.
• Movement to make forward passes possible: ahead of the ball and from behind the ball.

Objective

• To develop accurate shooting with both feet, and to gain a simple understanding of corner kicks for players 6 – 8 years old.

Organization (see above diagram)

• Place balls in corners of playing area.
• Coach rolls ball by foot or by hand.
• Coach shouts “Go!” and player at first cone must go around second cone.
• Shooting player retrieves own shot then returns to end of line.
• This increases the activity level and also encourages the shooter not to kick the ball too far, but rather concentrate on the accuracy.
• No goalkeeper, so players practice accurate kicking.
• Change players and cones to opposite side.
• Children leave their ball with the coach on the way back.
• With a large group split into two (with Assistant Coach) and have one group at one end and one at the other.

Teaching Points

• As players become better, narrow the goal or deliver quicker passes.
• Point out that most shots in illustration will be taken with the left foot.
• Total concentration: head down, eyes on the ball.
• Encourage accuracy rather than power shooting.
• Use inside of foot – like a hockey stick.
• Encourage players to strive to become “two-footed.”

Target

• To record the number of the team’s scoring attempts that succeed in 20 shots, and keep score at each practice.