By Jebreel Bubtana
This exercise is a great way to have your players work hard and have fun at the same time. This helps to develop aerobic and anaerobic fitness as it involves many short sprints and changes of direction as well as recovering as a defender.
Split your team into groups of 3 and set up the field as shown below in figure 1.
The attacker starts with the ball must score in either of the two gates at the
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on extension dives, confidence and range.
Start with two balls 8 yards apart. A keeper is 3 yards back from the middle of the balls.
With many keepers they struggle with the belief that they can extend and get to a ball in the corner. This activity is designed to
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on possession and getting to goal.
This activity uses a half field with a goal and a keeper on each end line. There is a middle grid of 20 x 44 with a 4 v 4 in this grid. There is a neutral player out wide on each side and an attacking player 15 yards from each goal.
The players in the grid play possession and need
Continue readingWe have a great new video series called Attacking the Barcelona Way. These are new style "Tactical Analysis" videos. You won't see usual "old school" type footage with players demonstrating drills and exercises. These videos go much deeper and include actual real game footage, where the coach analyses the tactics, breaks down movement, sequences, combinations,
Continue readingBy Jebreel Bubtana
This exercise works on your player’s first touch, speed dribbling and endurance. This is another exercise that can work very well with your team for preseason training.
There are 4 stations as shown below (figure 1), with your players spending 5 minutes at each station before moving onto the next.
Station 1:
The player must shuffle in and out of the cones before receiving a pass from the feeder. The ball must be controlled with the
By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity helps a player work the ball out of the back under pressure
Start with a player defending the goal out wide around 35 yards from goal. A player attacking the goal starts 5 yards further back. There is a keeper in goal and a server toward the middle of the field with balls.
The server plays a ball toward the
Continue readingSequential Practice Progression for Learning to Dribble Deceptively
By Andy Barney, coach of Legendary 1v1 Moves
The starting point and length of each section depends on the existing ability of the players you are coaching.
When coaching beginners you will most probably not incorporate the latter stages of the progression into your practice.
When coaching accomplished dribblers you will most probably not incorporate the earlier stages of the progression (although it sometimes helps to go over the technical coaching points once in a while).
In a dribbling progression the objective is to gradually and sequentially increase the
Continue readingBy Jebreel Bubtana
This is a great exercise to use to work on first touch and develop your player's endurance levels. I have used 10 players in this exercise as an example; however the numbers can be modified depending on the size of your squad. The exercise starts with 5 players on the outside of the area with a ball each and the other 5 players in the middle of the area without a ball (figure 1).
The players in the middle run towards the outside players and when they are around 5 yards away, the ball will be passed to them by
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on high balls played toward the crossbar.
It’s not unusual before a training session to see a few players lined up anywhere from 18 - 40 yards out with balls.
They are playing a game called “cross bar” where they take turns chipping the ball toward the goal with the objective of
Continue readingby Gabriel Celante
This drill helps to improve anaerobic and aerobic capacity, speed with and without the ball as well as accuracy passing, timing, first touch, and dribbling with all parts of the foot.
Organization
By Daniel Severn
This week we focus on agility and technique. Agility plays a huge part in a players’ ability to perform in a game, soccer has so many changes of direction and the more agile players have the best chance of reacting in many different situations – defending, dribbling, intercepting passes to name a few. Technique is also key to a players’ performance, without a good first touch and dribbling skills, a players game can become limited. Developing these aspects of the game can only enhance performance.
This circuit is designed to work groups of 2 or 3 players at a time. I would set up 5 stations exactly the same to allow a full team to work at the same time.
Set Up and Directions
Each station should be set up as shown below. If you do not have a ladder you could use cones to mark out the agility aspect of the mini course.
Player one begins at the start of the ladder and Player two will begin with
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on good stance, quick reactions and holding the ball.
Start with a keeper and a server 3 yards apart. The server has a ball at his feet.
The key here is the closeness of the keeper to the server. The further away from each other they are, the easier
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on possession, crossing and finishing.
This activity uses half a field. Have a 30 x 44 grid just outside the top of the D with a 4 v 4 plus 1 neutral (numbers can be changed). There is also a neutral player out wide on each side. There is a keeper in goal.
The players inside the grid are trying to keep possession and are trying to make 5 consecutive passes (the neutral player is always on offense). Once a team makes 5 consecutive passes (passes to the neutral player inside the grid counts) they can
Continue readingBy Daniel Severn
This week we will focus on quick changes of direction within a fast paced, competitive exercise. I will use the ‘drag-back’ turn as the example throughout the exercise, but any other turn involving a full change of direction can be used (e.g. Cruyff turn, step-over, inside/outside cuts etc).
Set Up and Directions
For this exercise you only need a few cones. The example in the diagram is set up for just two players, but you can add in more ‘lanes’ of cones to involve as many players as you need to accommodate.
Here we have five cones laid out approximately 5 yards apart from each other. Two players begin each with a ball a few yards either side of Cone number 1. On the coaches signal the players
Continue readingWelcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on shot blocking, footwork and angles.
Start with a keeper in goal and a few field players on one corner of the 18 with balls.
The first field player starts dribbling across the 18. With each step the keeper has to
Discover How to Harness the Exciting 4-2-3-1 Formation and Replicate the Devastating Attacking Power of the World’s Most Successful Teams If you've been looking for a way to coach your team how to play the 4-2-3-1, you've just found it. Coaching the 4-2-3-1 is a special 12-part video series which provides a comprehensive tactical and training guide to this exciting
Continue readingWelcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity involves a 4 person combination for a cross and finish.
Start with 2 players on the end line and 2 players 40 yards out. The sets of players are 5 yards apart. There is a keeper in goal.
The 2 players on the end line check back to the ball in a
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on balls over hit to the far post.
One of the most difficult ball to deal with is the ball served far post that is over hit.
If the attacker can get to the ball they tend to try to go for
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on seeing the whole field.
Start with half a field with a line down the middle. A keeper starts in goal and there are two teams of 2 in each half. There is a coach for each half just beyond midfield.
The teams on the right side start by playing 2 v 2 to goal. The keeper has to focus on that game while
By Jebreel Bubtana
This exercise works on first touch with different parts of the body as well as agility, coordination and conditioning, which is great way to start your pre-season training.
There are 3 different stations as shown below (figure 1), with players spending 4 minutes working before switching with the feeder and then moving on to the next station.
Station 1:
The player must run through the ladder placing both feet in the gaps of the ladder, after this is done they must sprint to the feeder who will be holding the ball out in
By Stevie Grieve, Author of Coaching the 4-2-3-1, Coaching the 4-2-3-1 ADVANCED Tactics, Modern Soccer Tactics and Winning Soccer Tactics.
Barcelona in the 2012/2013 season have been almost unplayable. Last season, they became slightly predictable, they suffered from no width or balance, especially on the left side, which Jordi Alba has fixed this season, and suffered from being too focused on playing centrally, and retaining possession when penetration opportunities have become available. This season, Alba has contributed to the width and balance issue on the left side, but more noticeable has been the massive amount of ‘killer passes’ being played from all over the field. In this game, Alexis, Messi and Villa all scored from a killer pass from different areas of the field.
Alexis’ goal – Iniesta plays a through ball 40 yards from goal between the center backs
Iniesta dribbles forward with Alba in support on the left to make a 2v1. As Iniesta cuts inside, Alexis knows that a space between
Continue readingWelcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity is a warm up that involves the entire team.
In the center circle have the field players dribbling around at full speed. Two keepers are also in the circle
The players are dribbling at speed and the keepers look for
By Jebreel Bubtana
This exercise is a great way to work on your player’s first touch at different heights and making sure that technique does not suffer as they get tired.
This exercise starts with a 4x4 yard box and one ball between two players as shown below (figure 1). One player will start with the ball in their hands and the other player will do all of the work for 1 minute.
The player without the ball shuffles to
Continue readingWelcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on throw ins and maintaining possession. The ball goes out of play and your team takes a throw in. The idea here is your team should either be trying to get behind the defense with a quick throw in (if available) or, they should try
Continue reading