Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s topic deals with adding defensive pressure to shooting activities to make it more realistic. There are some excellent examples of this in the book Modern Attacking & Goalscoring by Liverpool Academy coach, Phil Roscoe and Mike Vincent.
This can best be demonstrated using an activity I wrote about a few years ago (and is a nice little passing/shooting activity). This is a simple three person combination using the D as the work area. One player starts at each corner of the D and one player is at the top of the D. There are other players behind the first player in one line and they all have balls.
Player 1 passes to player 2 and then follows the pass.
Player 2 then lays the ball off for player 3 to come forward and shoot first time. Player 2 then takes player 3’s spot.
As soon as the shot is hit the new player 1 passes to the new player 2 (the previous player 1) who lays the ball off to the new player 3 (the previous player 2) and this keeps going.
This is a quick moving shooting activity that requires accurate short passes, quick sprints, timing and finishing.
The problem with this activity is there is no pressure. To add pressure we can add a fourth player in the activity who adds defensive pressure.
When player 1 passes to player 2, player 4 sprints to get to the middle and defend.
After player 3 shoots they would go to the back of line 4 and after player 4 defends they would go to the back of line 1
You can add pressure to most shooting activities to make it a bit more realistic and to make the attackers go quicker and be sharper.
There are some excellent examples of this in the book Modern Attacking & Goalscoring by Liverpool Academy coach, Phil Roscoe and Mike Vincent.
Have a great day!
Lawrence
