By Danny Carvalho This session was designed to work on the basics of defending and zonal defending. 1- Protect the goal – don’t concede 2- Avoid progression – don’t let them come near our goal 3- Recover the bal – win the ball back Some other concepts are addressed such as: - For opponents to
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “My team is awful at defending. What are some good team defending drills I can do that will help?" I love working on defending, especially team defending. This Part Two of three of my favorite drills that will help you with that matter. Activity 3 – Delay and recover This
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By Danny Carvalho, In 1v1 situations, goalkeepers need to read the play well to make a good decision and win their tough duel against strikers. This activity is designed to attack this issue and work on GKs ability to read the play well. Set up two mini goals side to side at about 5 yards
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “My team is awful at defending. What are some good team defending drills I can do that will help?" I love working on defending, especially team defending. Here are three of my favorite drills that will help you with that matter. Activity 1 – Master 1v2s Use about a third
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By Danny Carvalho Warm Up Get the players wound up with the one and only Sharks and minnows! Set up a middle zone for the “Shark”, a player without a ball who will be tagging the “minnows”, the other players with a ball each. The minnows’ goal is to get from one side to the
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “I like to have my players press high when the other team has the ball. I like this because if we can force a turnover near their goal, we have a good chance of scoring. But I need help in coaching this to my players. Sometimes when we press, we
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By Danny Carvalho, Goalkeepers have always been demanded to react as quickly as possible to goal attempts. With the evolution of ball technology, the modern arenas and the growth of the game, GKs have been stimulated more than ever to work on their quick reactions at practice. And this drill is all about that! GK
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “Do you have some good possession games to share? My players are getting better at keeping possession, but I tend to use the same games and I need some new possessions drills to stimulate them and continue to improve their possession?" First thing is: do you really need new possession
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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
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By Danny Carvalho - How about a possession-based session for fitness? This article’s session was designed to get players to work both technically and physically to perform passes and turns in a chaotic setting. The session was ran with six players and two coaches jumping in as support players in activities 2 and 3. Let’s
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “My two center defenders are good players but are not what you would call "fast". Occasionally we come across teams that have really quick strikers and this can destroy us. What can I do to give help to my center defenders in these cases?" Let’s go over three strategies I’d
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By Danny Carvalho This session was planned and designed to get players to work together as beautifully and effective as Modric and Kroos during their golden years at Madrid. Warm Up In this first drill, have the team split into groups of five if possible. It’s all about receiving, turning and passing. One player does
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By Danny Carvalho - This transition and sprinting drill is awesome to increase your players speed in a realistic game situation activity which is much more motivating than perform a number of sprints out of context. Set up In a small-sided field of about 65x40 yards, set cones side to side in a line at
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “We play with two very good wingers who create a lot of our attacking chances. But they don't help back much when we are defending and we tend to get overrun sometimes. What responsibilities should my wingers have when we are defending and how can I coach them to understand
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By Danny Carvalho Warm Up (10 – 15 minutes) Working in groups of three being one starting central with the ball and two starting wide. Players pass and overlap the player they passed the ball to. This goes all the way up the field and ends with a shot on goal. Have the players rotate
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By Danny Carvalho - When talking about pressing, we must consider a lot of intensity and effort to apply good pressure on your opponent. And it comes without saying that your players must be grinding remarkably on their physicality. This rondo was totally designed to work on your players capacity to endure the defensive demand.
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “My players love shooting drills, but I keep doing the same drills. Do you have some good and new shooting drills that will keep my players interested?" One of my favourite topics! It can be very challenging to set up shooting drills that won’t bore players after a while waiting
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By Danny Carvalho It is hard to find someone who doesn’t get excited about the Olympics! And if you work with kids, it is your job to talk about it and introduce some different sports to your kids knowledge. So how about mix soccer with some other sports? Warm Up – Activity 1 This is
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By Danny Carvalho - This small sided game was designed to make players keep a very high intensity throughout the rounds playing. Set up In an approximately 35x25 yards field, have one regular size goal in one end and two mini-goals at the other end, with as many balls as possible outside the mini goals
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “Our team plays with two strikers. One is really good with his back to goal and the other is pretty quick and makes great runs into space. How can I best utilize both strikers?" Many teams throughout history made the best out of playing with two men forward. Digging up
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By Danny Carvalho Warm up – Activity 1 Start with small-sided scrimmages (3v3 or 4v4) to get them enthusiastic and excited about the practice. This is a great format to get loads of touches and build from the back a lot of times. As they get on fire, you move on to the next activity.
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By Danny Carvalho - This Small Sided-game was applied to a group of seven players aged 15 to 23 and two coaches. Have a player be a Goalkeeper and split the rest into two teams of three. Have them sort out which team starts attacking and which team starts defending. The game is going to
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By Danny Carvalho Question - “We are not having much success building out of the back. The players tend to panic and either hit a long ball when not needed. Do you have any exercises I can try in training that will help this? " To confidently build from the back, the players involved must
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By Danny Carvalho These drills will help you make the most of your 1v1 opportunities. Warm up – Activity 1 This one is called “The electric fence”. Set up a square with cones side by side in the middle (the electric fence) and a gate on each side. Starting without the ball as tag 1v1,
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