Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today's featured activity works on passing with proper pace.
Start with 6 players on the perimeter of a circle with a diameter of around 20 yards. They are in groups of 2's and are opposite their partners in the group. There is one ball per group.
The players start off passing back and forth with their partner. They play
Continue readingWelcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today's featured activity works on forwards working together, combination play and finishing.
Start with a keeper in goal, two forwards staggered but close together and a few players in line near midfield with balls.
The first player in line plays the ball to the deep forward (who has
Continue readingHere is a fun game for young soccer players that involves a lot of running and also technical and tactical aspects. While it’s great for young players it’s interesting to do with older players as well. They will work just as hard, get just as much out of it and have a blast playing.
This game can be played with full sized goals and keepers or smaller goals without keepers. In this example the game will have keepers. The size of the field can vary but here the field is 40 x 30
Start with two teams lined up on one of the sidelines with a coach between them with balls.
The coach plays a ball to the middle of the field and the first player in each line starts by
Combining fitness, agility and skill work is a great way to get a lot done in a short period of time.
A simple example would start with a server with a ball and a player 10 yards away behind a cone.
Play would start with a ball to one side of the cone, The player comes forward 1 touches the ball back to the
Ideally we would like to do all fitness with a ball but the reality is there are times when pure running is helpful. Some players (and teams) simply are not capable of pushing themselves all out in soccer related activities and for those players it’s best to use activities where using fitness specific running is valuable.
In this activity you can vary the distances. I have done this with distances as short as 20 yards and as long as 120 yards. The thing I like about this activity is the faster the players run, the less distance they have to sprint. This is their incentive to really push themselves..
In the example below, we are going to use half a field for the distance. We could use a cone at each end but instead will use the goal for one end and the center circle for the other. Players start in two lines side by side
The players start by jogging around the around.
Continue readingHere is a simple activity that works on agility, sprinting and one touch passing. This uses L shaped movement with passing
Start with 7 cones making up and L (or a reverse L) and 3-4 players to the side. Two players start 10 yards from the last cone with 1 ball.
The first player in line “slaloms” through the cones sideways and then forward until getting to
Adding technical training into conditioning is a great way to ‘kill 2 birds with 1 stone”. This activity will first show you an example of this and then add a second bit of technical work to really challenge the players.
Start with some low hurdles 1 yard apart starting 40 yards from goal. There is a keeper in goal and the field players are in a line each with a ball. The server (or a resting field player) is to the side of the hurdle closest to the goal.
The first player in line passes to the server and then goes over each of the hurdles as fast as he can. He then
One way to add conditioning to a training session is to simply add intensity. Below is a 6 v 4 plus keepers protect the lead game that lasts 8 minutes and done at full speed has a lot of fitness work built in.
This game uses a half field and has a goal on each end line and a keeper in each goal. There are four midfielders and two forwards on one team and four backs on the other team.
This is an 8 minute game and the yellow team starts off up one goal. There objective is to
A common (and simple) passing activity would be a 5 or 6 person passing activity with one touch passing between two lines and a sprint after each pass.
Many years ago, when I first created FineSoccer.com I described one of my favorite fitness activities. It’s a combination of breakaways, sprints, defending and goalkeeping and over 10 years later it’s still one of the best conditioning activities I know.
This activity requires two full sized goals, a keeper in each goal and 4-6 players to the right side of each goal. The size of the field can vary as the further the goals are from each other the greater the distance of each run but the closer they are together the more runs each player will get in a given time period. I have done this with goals as close as 35 yards apart and as far apart as 120 yards. In this example we are going to go with the goals 60 yards apart.
This is a breakaway activity with a defender chasing. To start, one player from the
Here is an aerobic activity incorporated into a small sided scrimmage.
This is a 5 v 5 game plus keepers on a field 36 yards lone and 44 yards wide. There is a full sized goal on each endline. There are 3 cones 5 yards outside of each sideline.
A server starts with balls around midfield and calls “go”. Upon hearing “go” each field player must sprint around the
Today's article is from Dr. Mouwafak Majeed Mola of the Aspire Academy, Qatar.
Players distribute as in the figure and each group met a second group with a ball and separates by a distance of 10-20 yards according to the age and efficiency of the players.
1st activity:
1-Player1 passes to player2 and sprint the middle distance(75% effort) To end up behind the other group.
2- Player 2 receives the ball behind the line and executes fast dribble all the
Continue readingHere is an interesting 3 v 2 exercise which, when done at full speed works on attacking, defending and a lot of fitness.
The game is on a 40 x 30 grid with full sized goals and a keeper in each goal. One attacking player is at midfield with two defending players. Two attacking players are on the end line. There are players ready to take each players position.
One keeper starts with a ball and starts by rolling the ball into the targets feet. The two other attackers join
Lateral movement forms a major part of speed during soccer, specifically during ball control. If a player possesses the skill of moving laterally, then opponents can be avoided. It is highly beneficial to forwards who need to make repeated runs with lateral movement in between. Here is an exercise that will help to improve speed and balance while changing direction: Lateral One Step and Sprint.
Purpose:
- To teach athlete to maintain speed and balance, while
Continue readingToday I’m going to show an other interesting way to integrate soccer fitness into small sided games and activities. There are many other options shown in the DVD Modern Soccer Conditioning: Fitness with a Technical and Tactical Element.
This is a 7 v 5 game plus keepers on half a field. There are two fill sized goals and one team is working on attacking and the other team is working on defensive shape and counter attacks.
The players start on the field and each of the attackers is assigned a number from 1-7. There are 7 balls on the sidelines.
To start the game player 1 on the attacking team sprints to the
There are many ways to work on a soccer teams fitness. These can range from sprints, to longer runs to ladder work, to plyometrics, to resistance work to weights to any number of other activities. One thing that is often forgotten is much of the fitness work can be built into the various games and activities.
One of the most valuable games I like to play with teams is the 5 yard sprint rule after every pass. This can be a 3 v 3 scrimmage up to full sided 11 v 11. It’s a regular game with the only restriction being that after every pass there must be a hard 5 yard sprint by the passer. Any passer who doesn’t sprint after
Continue readingWhen talking about fitness and conditioning one of the most important things for players (and teams) to do is make sure they get a proper warm up. If you are a coach, it’s vital you make sure your players warm up properly. If you are a player, it’s your responsibility to make sure you are warmed up properly. If your team or coach doesn’t make sure you warm up properly, you should do it yourself.
Years ago, warming up meant static stretching and then a little bit of jogging. Nowadays, one is much more likely to do some form of dynamic warm up
Below is an example of a dynamic warm up I used for years.
Continue readingWhile it would be wonderful if we could focus all of our time in training on technical and tactical parts of the game, the reality is additional fitness work is important. The key is whenever possible, try to integrate either technical or tactical aspects into your fitness work.
Below is an example of how you can use plyometrics and incorporate quick one and two touches into the activity to get the best of all worlds
Plyometrics usually involve short quick jumps to improve quickness, explosiveness and to decrease the likelihood of injury. One way to look at plyometrics is they wont make much of an impact on your time in the one mile run but potentially can make a major impact on your first step and since you have a whole lot more first steps than you do one mile runs, they are extremely valuable.
Continue readingCombining technical training with fitness work is a great way to be efficient in your training as well as to force the technical work to be done at speed and under pressure.
Here is a simple way to work on fitness while also doing technical training.
Start with 2 lines of 10 cones. The lines are 5 yards apart and each cone is 5 yards apart (in the example below I’m only using 5 cones in each line due to space issues). There is a player on the outside of one line and a server with a ball behind each of the opposite openings.
Continue readingTeaching players to turn with the ball is an area that I don't see covered very often by coaches working with players from eight to 12. I'm not sure if it is because the coaches think the topic is difficult to teach young players or because they don't want to take time away from areas
Continue readingIntegrating goalkeepers into team sessions is often a challenge for coaches who have experience playing or coaching the position. John Murphy deals with this subject in his excellent book, " Team Training for the Goalkeeper". Below is an excerpt from this book. It is from the Goalkeeper and Team Warm-Up Chapter. If the goal is
Continue readingA dynamic warm up is vital to a successful training session. There are many different versions and mixed feelings regarding whether there needs to be a ball involved or not. Many feel any time in training that doesn’t utilize a ball is wasted time. I, and others, feel it’s more important to get a good
Continue readingBrazilians learn the game by playing the game. In many countries training sessions are focused around drills and exercises that isolate techniques and tactics. Brazilian coaches spend most of their time creating playing environments with small-sided games that put an emphasis on the specific areas of the game but also train the player ‘globally’. One
Continue readingIncorporating the keeper into team training is vital to do but so often neglected. Those teams “fortunate” enough to have a designated keeper coach tend to have the keepers go with this coach for part, if not all, of the team training. The reason for doing this is because the skills, techniques and tactics in
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