Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity is a game that involves decision making, spacing, movement and much more.
Start with a 40 x 40 grid with a 10 x 10 area in the middle. There is a 4 yard wide goal in each corner.
This is a 6 v 6 game (the numbers can vary) with a neutral player in the middle. Each team is assigned 2 goals opposite of each other (in the diagram below the yellow team defends goals 1 and 3 and the black team defends goals 2 and 4)
The only player allowed in the 10 x 10 grid is the neutral player.
To score a goal a team must pass into the neutral player and then then the neutral player (who is limited to one touch) must find a player on the attacking team who scores by passing through either of their goals they are attacking
If the other team wins the ball, they also must play through the neutral player to score.
The team that scores gets the ball again.
To make this game even more difficult replace the neutral player with a player from each team. This means there is a player from each team in the neutral area and the ball still must go through them. It’s more difficult because now the central player has a defender. If you make this change, you might want to get rid of the one touch limitation.
If the transition to two players in the middle is too difficult you can add a neutral player into the middle as well. This means it will always be 2 v 1 in the middle so while it’s more difficult than just a neutral player, it’s not as difficult as the 1 v 1. The neutral player would always be on offense.
These are great activities to work on spacing, finding a central midfielder to play through, movement off the ball and much more.
Have a great day!
Lawrence
