Tag Archives for " Breakaways "

2 This Is How You Finish a Break-Away

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on finishing breakaways.

A breakaway is such a great way to score a goal and while they don’t occur frequently, they do occur frequently enough that teams need to prepare for them. Not enough teams prepare for them and those that do tend to do so in such an artificial manner that it barely helps. We see teams set up with a line of players 30-40 yards out with balls and a keeper in goal.

The first player in line starts dribbling and the keeper

0 Break-Aways and Reading the Touch

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on breakaways, quick shots and reading the touch

Start with a keeper in goal, a player between the 12 and 18 and a server with balls out wide.

The server plays a ball to the player and the keeper goes

0 How To Defend Break-Aways

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on defending breakaways.

Start with a keeper in goal, a server 30 yards out with balls and an attacking player facing the server.

The server passes the ball past

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 How NOT To Screw Up a 2v0 Break-Away

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on 2 v 0 breakaways.

Recently I have seen a few situations where two players broke through on a breakaway (either because of a poorly executed offside trap or the last defender makes a big mistake). In two of these cases the attacking player without the ball ran beyond the ball, into an offside position, which made him unusable. Here is a simple activity that will help prepare players for this type of a situation.

Start with a keeper in goal and two attacking players 40 yards out (one with a ball). Have a defender 10 yards behind them. The purpose of the defender is to force the attackers to go at speed.

Play starts with the

0 Reading the Touches On Breakaways

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter.  Today’s featured activity works on reading the touches on breakaways.

Goalkeepers tend to work on the technique and footwork for breakaways but just as important is reading the opponents touches.  Frequently the breakaway opportunity comes about real quickly.

An example of a typical way keepers might work on breakaways is to have a player start 30-40 yards out and dribble in at speed.

In this activity the keeper knows where the breakaway is

0 A Favorite Conditioning Activity With a Ball

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

2 Footwork, Anticipation and Breakaways

Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter.  Today’s featured activity works on footwork, anticipation and breakaways.

Start with a keeper and a server.  There are 4 cones making up a 4 yard square and the server is just outside of one part of the square and the keeper is just outside the opposite side.  There is a ball 4 yards outside of each side of the square.

In this example the black player is the server and the yellow player is the keeper.

The server moves side to side within the boundaries of the sides of the square and the