All Posts by Mike Saif

11 Session Designer Updates

We are making a wish list of improvements and new features to the Session Designer. If you have any ideas, please comment below. We would love to hear from you.  Please post below in the Comments section.

1 Possession and Group Decision Making

By Gabriel Celante

This drill will work on individual and group decision making about where to play the ball, holding possession, and completing a series of passes. This drill also emphasizes switching the point of attack and quickly transition play.

Organization
1. Set up the field as shown on the diagram.
2. Split the field in two halves
3. Split the teams in 2 groups of 5v1, 5v2 or 4v2

Instructions

The team that starts the ball has to make 5 passes and then

0 The Order Game - An Effective Way to Start Any Session

By Daniel Severn

This week’s exercise can be used as a multi-purpose exercise. It is a very fun game that will get your players pushing themselves to the limit. It is also a very effective way to start a session as a warm up as it has very positive effects on team communication as well as getting them thinking and using their ‘soccer brains’ from the start of the session.

Set Up and Directions
The exercise is set up as shown below.

Above, we have 3 teams of 2 players ready to compete against one another. Each team has 4 objects in front of them (in this case, a small cone, a ball, a tall cone and a flag) spaced approximately 5 yards from each other. This is a speed and agility exercise which involves quick thinking from the active player as well as

0 Defensive Shape and Patience

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Todays featured activity works on defensive shape and patience

Start with a keeper in goal, a back 4 and 2 center mids (this is assuming you play with a back 4, if you play with 3 in back, set up accordingly). The attacking team has 2 forwards and 3 midfielders to start.

The three attacking midfielders pass the ball around and try to

0 Moving Forward to Make a Save

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on shot blocking and coming forward to make the save.

Start with a keeper in goal and a server with a few balls at the top of the 18.

The server starts by shooting on goal. It can be

0 Attacking and Counter-Attacking

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on 3 v 2 attacking and 2 v 1 counterattacking.

On a 40 x 30 grid, with full sized goals and a keeper in each goal, have attacking groups of 3’s and defending groups of 2’s.

The keeper with the attacking team starts by playing the ball in for a

0 Drill To Improve Footwork For Shotblocking

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on footwork, positioning and shot blocking.

Start with 2 cones set up 4 yards apart 4 yards from goal. A keeper is in goal and 3 servers are inside the 18 with balls.

The center server starts and the keeper steps up through the cones to

0 Possession and Winning the Ball Back with High Pressure

By Jebreel Bubtana

This exercise gets the players to develop their anaerobic endurance very well by winning the ball back quickly. The idea is to place the team with the ball under high pressure and win the ball back as quickly as possible and then pass the ball out the outside players and keep possession to get their breath and shape back.

Set up the field as shown below (figure 1). The area is 20x20 with 4v4 in the middle and 4 neutral players on the outside who cover the four sides on the square.

Both teams try to keep possession of the ball and can use the neutrals on the outside of the area to help them keep the ball and get as

0 Spain, the 4-2-3-1 and Tika-Taka

This post is part of the Introduction for our book, Coaching Spanish Soccer by Jordi Pascual.

THE 1-4-2-3-1 & THE “TIKI-TAKA”

“Tiki-taka” is the popular way to describe this possession style used by Spain. The journalist Andrés Montes made the name very popular, and a lot of people think that he was the first one to use it; but this is not true. The term “tiki-taka” was first used by a Spanish Coach called José María Maguregui (known as “Magu”), when he was Manager of RCD Espanyol from Barcelona, during the beginning of the 80s. With that, he gave the name to a style of playing based in keeping the ball and not going so directly to goal.

The important thing here is that the “tiki-taka”, together with the formation 1-4-2-3-1 is used by all Spanish National Teams, from U-16 to the “A” team. Everybody is playing the same way, which makes the players know how it works when following the entire path from U-16, until they arrive to the “A” team. Of course, some players arrive older to the National Team, but it is also obvious that the older they are, the more knowledge of the game they have, so it is not difficult to fit within the team.

As can be seen in the picture, there are 4 Defenders, playing in a Flat-Four, 2 Defensive Midfielders, 3 Attacking Midfielders (1 centred a 1 at each flank) and 1 Centre Forward or Striker.

First of all, let me say that I’m not a fan of “formations”. Formations, for me, is just a number or a name written on a chalkboard or a sheet of paper, and saying where a player will be at the beginning of the match. Also, it says, more or less, where the area of influence will be of that player, that’s all. Roles and responsibilities of players are given by the coach/manager of the team, not by the “position” you have. But that’s another story.

The “formation” 1-4-2-3-1 used by Spain

In the Spanish case, the Back Four is a classic from the last years in football. That means

0 Creating Scoring Opportunities For the Withdrawn Forward

This post is an excerpt from our new book, "The False 9", by James Lambert.  The excerpt is from the Training Sessions chapter and the section focusing on the passing drills part.

Passing Exercise – Striking the Ball 1

Objective:
Passing Exercise building up to a strike at goal.

Exercise Description:
Previous coaching points leading up to the

0 Foot Skills and Conditioning

By Jebreel Bubtana

This exercise can be used as a warm up for most of your sessions as it gets the players working on their endurance whilst maximizing the number of touches that they have on the ball.

Set up the field as shown below in figure 1. Each player will need a ball and they start off by dribbling around anywhere in the area.

The coach will then use numbers as instructions for the players as follows:

Number 1 – ten toe taps
Number 2 – ten

0 The Importance of Staying On Your Feet to Save a Break-Away

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity helps the keeper stay on his feet on breakaways.

One mistake keepers make when dealing with breakaways is they tend to want to go down too quickly. If they go down with the ball at the players feet, the player will easily be able to pull the ball away and score. It’s extremely important for the keeper to stay on his feet until the ball is played away by the field player and then, and only then, should the keeper go down to get the ball.

In this activity we have a grid 20 yards long and 15 yards wide. The keeper starts on one end line and a line of field players is on the other end line with balls.

The first player starts by dribbling toward the keeper and the keeper

0 Small-Sided Game For Defending

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on defensive recovery

Start with a 4 v 4 game plus keepers on a 50 x 40 area

This game is designed to work on players getting back and providing support after the player they are marking plays the ball. Too often we see defensive players either

2 The Importance of the Triangle Midfield

Today's post is the introduction from our book, The Triangle Midfield.  This book has proved very popular since its release a few weeks ago.

A Triangle is a shape that has three distinct points creating three sides that may be even or uneven to one another and form angles at each connection. A Triangle Midfield is a formation that includes three players centrally in a triangle formation that maintain the same or similar distances from one another while maintaining the same or a similar pace in the same direction staying with the flow and progression of the game.

This book will not be for basic or fundamental training or coaching, but is designed for more of a higher level of training and understanding. It will cover different formations associated with three central midfielders and not only formations with JUST three central midfielders. It will explain the functionality of the formation, how the formation is trained for possession and attacking roles and responsibilities, and training for defensive roles and responsibilities. Formations covered will include the

0 Defending a 2v1 Situation

By Jebreel Bubtana

Learning how to defend a 2v1 is very important, as it is a situation that comes up many times during the course of a game.

Set up the field as shown below in figure 1. Mini goals or Pugg goals can be used in the top right and top left corners of the area. The exercise starts with the defender who passes the ball across the area to the two attackers.

The attackers try to dribble the ball through the gate on the other side of the field in the middle. The defender must

0 1v1 Penetration Drill

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on 1 v 1 penetration

Start with a 30 x 30 grid with two teams of threes. There is a player from each team in diagonal corners and a 1 v 1 in the middle. There is one ball

In this example the yellow team starts on offense. The player in the corner with the ball starts by

0 Drill For Parries and Break-Aways

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on parries, quick recovery and breakaways.

Start with a keeper in goal, one server on an angle 15 yards out with a few balls and a second server on a similar angle on the other side, also with balls.

The first server starts by

3 Defending Without Kicking the Ball Away

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

A long time rule of thumb for soccer in the defensive part of the field has been “If in doubt, kick it out”.

The logic for this rule of thumb is when the ball is in the defensive part of the field, if you have possession of the ball and can’t find a good option, if you kick the ball out of bounds, it will give your team time to get back to help you defend.

The problem with this is when you factor in that more than 50% of all goals come from dead ball situations, do you really want to give the opposing team a dead ball situation? Needlessly giving away corner kicks and throw in’s can create a lot more danger than working your way out of danger.

Most of the time, when a player has the ball in back, even when they are under pressure, they still out-number the opposition (especially if the keeper is providing support as opposed to just standing in goal yelling “Clear!, Clear!”.) Think about the amount of time spent in training working on 3 v 2, 4 v 2 and 5 v 3 and most of the time, this is the exact same situation. It’s just a matter of

0 Numbers Game

By Jebreel Bubtana

This exercise works very well to provide a fun training environment for your players whilst ensuring that they are working on their endurance and reaction time.

Set up the field as shown below in figure 1. Two goalkeepers are needed then split your group of players into two teams and have the players’ number themselves (this is based on how many players are on each team, in the diagram below, the players would be numbered 1-3). In order to keep the players working hard continuously, ensure that you have plenty of soccer balls with you.

With the players lined up either side of the coach, the ball is thrown or passed into the middle of the area and at the same time the coach

0 Recognizing and Working on Weaknesses

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s topic deals with recognizing and working on weaknesses.

Recently I was thinking about some of the differences between coaching field players and keepers. Besides the obvious things one thing that came to mind was the emphasis on focussing on strengths vs weaknesses.

If a field player has a strength we want to really work on that strength. As an example, a great goal scorer who is somewhat deficient in his marking would be someone we would try to put in a position to score as much as possible. We would want to help him with his marking but when a field player has a true talent, you

1 Passing and Receiving

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on passing, receiving and taking players on.

Start with 3 groups in a confined space. In this example, we have 3 groups of 4’s in a 40 x 40 area. One of the groups starts with a ball.

The yellow group starts with a ball and they are looking to

0 The Secret of Building a Style of Play Around Specific Types of Players

Today's article is a blog post from Paul Grech and his blog, Blueprint for Football.  The blog post is an interview Grech did with Jordi Pascual, the author of our books, Coaching Spanish Soccer and Developing a Style of Play.

Given that he had a team that contained the talents of David de Gea, Thiago Alcantara, Iker Muniain and Isco, it is tempting to assume that Julen Lopetegui's job as the Spanish Under 21 manager is a fairly easy one. Yet there was more to Spain as they won their second consecutive European title then a collection of talented players; their typical play based on short passing and intense pressure placed those talents in a position to excel.

Again, the temptation is there to generalise and assume that a Spanish national team playing that kind of football is a given; that it is automatic. Yet it is not. Players spend only a fraction of their time with the national team and during such restricted time-frames it is practically impossible for them to 'learn' a method of playing.

So how do Spain manage to play in that manner? An explanation was provided in part by Lopetegui himself who said "We have a crystal clear philosophy on how to play football...ultimately for all Spanish national team football we want to

1 1v1 Defending Drills for Conditioning

By Jebreel Bubtana

It is important to get your players to understand that when defending they must show the attackers away from goal and this set of exercises is great for developing this understanding and working on endurance.

Set up and directions:

Set up the field as below (figure 1). The cones are set up 10 yards apart and the cones act as attackers. The defenders must curve their run and close the space down to the cone quickly. The player must defend the cone for 3 seconds and then move onto the next two cones, doing the same thing before going back to the start cone. The defenders must complete this circuit using the correct techniques 6 times. This also works on the players’ endurance and the coach must emphasize that the players cannot get sloppy and not defend the cones properly as their legs get tired.

Coaching Points:

• Curve run as shown by the arrows above.
• Close down the cones quickly.
• As the defender gets closer they must

0 Penetrating Passes

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on possession, penetrating passes and defending.

Start with a 30 x 30 grid with a 10 x 10 area in the middle. This is a 5 v 5 possession game with 2 neutral players.

In this example, the black team is going to start on offense, the yellow team is defending and the white players are neutrals and are always on the