By Danny Carvalho
That is one skill I truly appreciate immensely and in my humble opinion it makes a lot of difference on a player’s game. Even more if we are talking about a center midfielder or a center forward.
Warm Up
In groups of three, set up a grid and position one player with a ball in one end and the other two players in the middle of the grid, one behind another.
(A) passes the ball to(B) as (C) is shadow defending. (B) must receive and turn to dribble around (C) towards the other end. Now on the next round (B) is the one passing the ball, (C) is the one receiving the pass and (A) is the one shadow defending.
Give them a few ideas of turning moves to work on.
Progression: have the shadow defender tap one of the attacker’s shoulders. The attacker must turn to the opposite direction. Example: if they tap on the right shoulder than the attacker must turn left.
Activity 1
Same set up as before but now on a real 1v1 situation where the defender is actually trying to win the ball as the attacker is trying to beat the defender to run past the end line.
If the defender wins the ball they must pass the ball to the 1st player or dribble outside the grid.
Activity 2
This is another 1v1 situation only this time there are two gates on each end line. The goal now is to beat the defender and dribble through a specific spot. Besides working on receiving to play forward they will be also working on changes of direction after receiving and turning in case the defender doesn’t get beat on the first moment.
In case the defending player wins the ball they also have two gates to dribble past. The transitions are a very important part of the game.
Activity 3
The grand closing of the session is adding the goal and a goalkeeper and playing on a 3v3 situation where the coach serves the ball to one of the attacking players who have defenders man marking. Blacks scoring on the big goal, yellows counter attacking on the mini-goals.
The variety of options and decisions to be made now goes up and beyond! Switch the attacking team on every 7 plays.
By Danny Carvalho, DOC at Corinthians Campinas Youth Club, Brasil
