By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on Defensive shifting
Start with a keeper in goal, four defenders across the back and two center midfielders.
The attacking team has a center midfielder who initiates the play, two forwards
Continue readingBy Jebreel Bubtana
The following exercise and progression will work on your player’s aerobic fitness whilst using a ball. It is important to incorporate the ball into fitness exercises, as this will ensure that your players are working on their technique as well as their fitness during exercises.
Set up the field as shown below in figure 1 in a 30x30 yard area. Depending on the age of your team, you can make the area smaller. The gates made by the discs are 5 yards apart. You will also need to split your team into four groups, with each group having one ball.
The idea with this exercise is that all 4 groups link together with passing in an anti clockwise direction. The exercise starts with the player who is
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity is a 2 v 1 situation out wide playing into a 3 v 2 in the box.
Start with an outside midfielder near the touch line and a central midfielder with the ball. There are 3 attacking players at the edge of the box and two defenders in the box. A keeper is in goal.
The play starts with a pass from the central midfielder to
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on explosiveness, fitness and diving.
Start with 3 hurdles in a line, one yard apart (the height can vary based on the size of the keepers and what you have available). A keeper starts behind the first hurdle and a server is 10 yards in front of the last hurdle with some balls.
The keeper jumps off of both feet and goes over the first hurdle and then quickly
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This post is part of the "Tactical Exercises" chapter for our Training Sessions for the 4-3-3 book.
TACTICAL EXERCISES – 1
Development:
I'm really exctited about our latest project of online coaching seminars. We have received lots of questions from coaches asking if we are doing our coaching seminar at Nebraska this year. The answer to that is "no". Instead, we have decided to do a series of online coaching seminars. Instead of assembling a group of
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on working the ball out of the back and switching fields quickly.
Start with a full field and one full sided team (in this case I’m using a 4-4-2 but can be in any formation you choose) and an opposing team with a couple less players (in this case they are in a 2-3-2)
The ball starts with the keeper of the full sided team and they try to
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s topic deals with the approach on a goal kick.
One of the most common questions I receive is “how can I improve my goal kicks?”. I start my response by letting people know that this is NOT an area I’m strong with but like with everything else, repetition and good habits are the foundation for success.
If you watch football kickers (American football) you see that they take the same approach, same
Continue readingThis blog post is an excerpt from our new book, Tactics for winning soccer. The complete article includes tactics on how to deal with Messi and how best to apply pressure on Barcelona.
By Waleed Zaghloul.
Watching the latest Classico, I was wondering how much change will be seen from both teams based on the analysis of some vulnerabilities in a previous meeting this year (discussed in previous blogs). Some of the points analyzed back then showed two vulnerabilities for Barca, defending the counter attack specially against speedy opposition and the other was their left back. Real Madrid were overly aggressive in closing down Messi that they left other Barca player wide open at the back. Madrid were also notably losing their heads and committed very hard fouls when whatever they tried tactically did not work. Let us have a look at some instances of the latest Classico and decide for yourselves.
Asleep at the Wheel
This first image shows, in addition to the fact that this goal should very well have been called off for offside, a lack of interest from the Barcelona players. Four of the five players are
Continue readingBy Jebreel Bubtana
This exercise will work on the aerobic endurance of your players whilst being specific to the movements that your strikers will perform during a game.
Set up the field as shown in figure 1 below. The two goals are 30 yards apart with a 15x15 yard square in the middle. The coach must have two balls with them for this as well.
The player with their back to goal must check into the middle of the square, receive a pass from the coach and pass the ball
Continue readingBy Stevie Grieve, author of Coaching the 4-2-3-1 and Attacking in the 4-2-3-1. This is the final part of this article. Part One can be seen here and Part Two here and Part Three here.
Dortmund Counter-Press Goal v Arsenal
Ramsey wins possession from a loose pass by Reus, but this is where Ramsey finds himself in danger, as Lewandowski has already transitioned to defense, and is pressing Arteta, blocking a forward pass and forcing the ball into Ramsey if he wants to play 1st time. Kuba has also transitioned and is in line with
Continue readingBy Daniel Severn
This week’s exercise can be used as a technical warm-up or as the main technical focus of the session. Ideally you will use 4-6 players for this exercise but could add more to a group if necessary. The exercise will be performed at a high tempo and help to develop dribbling, first touch, and sharp changes of direction.
Set Up and Directions
The exercise is set up as shown below, showing one player with a ball, one waiting behind him and two players at the opposite end.
The player with the ball begins the play by dribbling the ball across towards
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on small combinations and shooting.
Start with two groups of players. Three players in each group start in triangles outside the 18. In the example below, players 1, 2 and 3 make a group and players 4, 5 and 6 make the second group. There is a keeper in goal and extra players for each group.
Player 1 starts with a ball and makes a quick pass to
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity is a small sided game that will help with short penetrating passes from the keeper.
This game is on a 40 x 30 grid with full sized goals and a keeper in each goal. There are two field players on each team and one neutral player who is always on the attacking team.
One keeper starts with the ball. One of the easiest thing to do is for the keeper to
Continue readingBy Stevie Grieve, author of Coaching the 4-2-3-1 and Attacking in the 4-2-3-1. Part One can be seen here and Part Two here. Part Four will be posted next week.
Dortmund Counter-Attack and score from the Low-Block Defensive System
Dortmund have 2 clear lines of 4 with Mkhitaryan supporting the pressure. The pass is forced into the 4v1 scenario on the edge of the box (it was 1v1 when the ball was passed), and now Dortmund are
Continue readingBy Daniel Severn
This week’s exercise focuses on explosive agility before attacking in a 2v1 situation. Explosive agility, speed and power are key aspects of the top soccer players games. This exercise will help you to develop explosiveness in a high tempo situation.
Set Up and Directions
The exercise is set up as shown below, showing the coach with a ball. There are two attackers in black and one defender in yellow.
Play begins on the coach’s call and all players perform agility before they can receive the ball. The defender must
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured is a full sided game emphasizing conditioning and corner kicks.
Start with a full sized field with keepers and each goal. Ideally you would play 11 v 11 but if you have less players use what you have. The only unusual thing is you want to have a few balls in each of the 4 corners.
This is a normal scrimmage with one major exception. Any time a ball goes out of play, the opposing team
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on two fisted punches and then quick recoveries.
Start with a keeper in goal, a server 40 yards out and a second server 25 yards out. Both servers have balls.
The far server starts by lofting a high ball in to come down around the 12 yard spot (if they can’t consistently
Continue readingBy Stevie Grieve, author of Coaching the 4-2-3-1 and Attacking in the 4-2-3-1. Part One can be seen here. Part Three will be posted next week.
Dortmund Scoring Chance
Dortmund have just regained possession, and try to attack quickly. Sahin teases a pass into Bender and Reus, tempting pressure from
Continue readingBy Jebreel Bubtana
This is a great exercise to work on your players reactions, endurance, agility and quickness, which are very important components for soccer players in order to get to a loose ball first.
Set up and directions:
Set up your field as shown below in figure 1. Split your players into two teams (you can set multiple fields up like this so that there is not much waiting time between goes) and they start behind the goal that they are defending. Mini goals or pugg goals are great for this exercise. To their right is a line of discs with a gate in front and to their left is a ladder with a gate in front. The coach will start with the balls in the middle of the area to one side.
The next part you can do a number of ways but I will give you an example. When the coach
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on receiving balls under pressure and passing away from pressure.
Start with 3 players in a 20 x 20 grid with a ball.
The black player starts with the ball and passes to
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on diving, shot blocking and reactions when screened.
Start with 4 keepers in a line 1 yard apart and a server 10 yards from the front keeper with balls. Each keeper is assigned a number.
The server starts by calling a number and then playing a ball on the ground to the
By Stevie Grieve, author of Coaching the 4-2-3-1 and Attacking in the 4-2-3-1.
One of Borussia Dortmund’s main strengths comes from the speed of which they attack, and the fluidity of the movement of the players in the front 4, a choice of either Blaszczkovski or Aubameyang, with Mkhitaryan, Reus and Lewandowski. All of these players have explosive pace, especially Aubameyang.
They have an interesting mix of attackers; Lewandowski brings old fashioned target man ability while having the combination play of a midfielder. Mkhitaryan brings balance to the attack as he fills in and opens up space well while combining with the midfield and providing a consistently good final ball, while Reus brings flair and penetration with runs from deep. Aubameyang offers penetration behind the defensive line as he likes to play high (similar to Walcott at Arsenal), while Kuba is the most defensive minded of the group, and is a vital part of the team balance – he will play deeper as Reus moves forward to play ahead of Lewandowski.
Borussia Dortmund have also perfected the art of ‘Counter-Pressing’ where the team press the ball after losing it, to win it back within 6 seconds, to ‘counter counter-attack’ and the speed of transition is a major way that they score goals.
Dortmund Mid-Block Positioning – Ball with full back or wide positioned center back.
Dortmund like to force play to one side, then ‘trap the opponent into passing into a specific opponent either on the
Continue readingBy Jebreel Bubtana
This exercise will work on your player’s first touch into space and give and goes, which along with short sprints will work on your player’s aerobic endurance.
Set up and directions:
Set up the field as shown in figure 1 with a 15x15 yard square, 3 players and 1 ball.
The player with the ball passes to their teammate in front of them and follow their pass. The player receiving the ball now takes
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