By Chris Kouns USSF A License (USSF Coaching Education Instructor) – NSCAA Premier Diploma (NSCAA Coaching Education Associate Staff Coach) – Head Coach Georgia Gwinnett College Women's Soccer These Speed of Play & Combination activities are designed to allow players to feel pressure (both with and without defenders) while focusing on technical repetition necessary to increase
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Click Here to Listen to Podcast Click Here for the Show Notes
Continue readingBy Sean Pearson
Session Length: 90 mins
During my days as a trainer, a lot of head coaches were (and still are) obsessed with the give and go, as if it’s the lifeblood of being a good team. While it is definitely a great combination to get behind opposition lines of defense it is not the be all and end all of attacking. Players and coaches alike need to understand it is a tool to use for specific scenarios to progress an attack, not to be used all the time as different scenarios will not allow it.
So to keep coaches happy and work on the give and go I developed a session that constantly worked on using the combination in the
By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on developing play out of the midfield.
Start using half a field with a line 35 yards out. There is a keeper in goal, two attacking players and two defending players in the final quarter and four attacking players and three defending players in the area near midfield.
The attacking team starts with the
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on passing, receiving and overlapping runs.
Start with an area 30 x 15. There are 2 players on each end and 2 players in the middle. One of the players on an end starts with a ball.
The player with the ball starts by passing to one of the
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on playing off of the target player.
Start with a target player at the top of the 18, a defender right behind him (and players prepared to take their place) a server 40 yards out and a line of attackers even with the server. The server has balls and there is a keeper in goal.
The server starts by playing a ball into the
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on quick passing combinations and shooting.
Start with three players in a triangle just outside the 18. The first player has a ball. There is a line of players outside the triangle with balls waiting to take the first player's spot. There is also a keeper in goal.
The first player passes to the
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity is a warm up for combination play with a little bit of pressure.
There are two groups of four in a 20 x 20 grid with two balls. To start I’ll show this with only one group. Two players are on end lines and the other two are in the middle. The ball starts with one of the outside players.
The player on the outside starts by
Continue readingBy Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on defensive pressure and attacking at speed.
Start with a 30 x 20 grid, 3 attackers, and 2 defenders. There is a group of balls on the end line the attackers are starting on.
One of the attackers starts with a ball and as soon as he touches the ball the
Continue readingA large part of teaching combination plays is teaching timing. The challenge is that timing is developed through an understanding of the basic principles and then getting the number of repetitions necessary to get a feel for the timing.
It's best to first teach the patterns of movement and basic principles of each combination play separately. The ones I focus on with young players are the give-and-go, overlap and layoff.
Once these have been learned and understood then I like to combine them into a pattern that allows for a lot of repetitions on both the left and the right side.
This setup is one that can be used for many passing activities from
Continue readingIn any sport, movement is the key to creating options. When players don't move or move in easily predictable ways they become easy to defend. The fewer players that are involved in the game, the more important movement becomes. With only four field players, Futsal places a high demand on player movement to pull the defense out of position and create openings to attack.
I attending the recent US Youth Futsal National Level 3 course in Gardner, KS. It was conducted by US Youth Futsal Technical Director Keith Tozer. The 20-hour course covered the basic techniques and
Continue readingSome coaches may consider pattern play to be limiting. They say, 'I don't want my players to be robots that just pass and move in the patterns that I've taught them.' I can understand this and I agree with it but where are our players supposed to get their creative ideas from? We want our
Continue readingThere are a number of books that I return to again and again for ideas and inspiration. Dutch Total Football is one of those books.
The author, Terry Michler, has studied the Dutch methodology over many years. This book is a in-depth review of all aspects of their system. It includes a history of Dutch soccer beginning with
Continue readingThe purpose of the winter Futsal league is mostly to keep the player's foot on the ball during the cold midwest winter. But each year the teams in our club participate in the Super F National Finals. The tournament brings together teams from around the United States in age groups from U8 through Men's Open. The tournament is great way to end the Futsal season and bring together all of the technical and tactical work we've done throughout the winter.
Being able to hold the ball under pressure is
Continue readingPlaying indoor soccer or Futsal during the winter provides a great opportunity to focus on teaching players how to break down defenses in 2 v 1 situations. This is an important tactical situation for players to understand and be familiar with because so much of the game can be broken down to 1 v 1
Continue readingThis is one of those sessions that I read or saw another coach present but I can't recall where. I wish I could give the coach credit because I've found it to be a very useful session to teach players how to make runs for their teammate with the ball.
The three runs that this session focuses on are checking, drifting and
Continue readingWelcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on a midfielder playing into a target player and then a quick combination.
A line of players with balls starts around 40 yards from goal. A target player started 25 yards from goal between two cones. A keeper is in goal.
The first player with the ball plays it into the
Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on midfielders and forwards working together in combination play.
We want our players to get accustomed to looking for combination opportunities so in these activities we recreate various ones.
Starting with 4 attacking players and a keeper. One player is a forward, one is an outside midfielder and 2 are central midfielders.
The first combination simply is a pass into the target player who then
As I've discussed in earlier posts, I think that most coaches agree that our players don't watch the game being played at the highest level enough. Kids in countries where soccer is part of their culture grow watching professional player every week so when it comes time for them play they have a rich source of creative ways to break down defenses. They've watched Messi and Iniesta rip apart a back four with quick passing combinations and then tried the same thing with their friends at the park. Our players need to be given examples of ways to create goal scoring opportunities so they can look for those situations
Continue readingMy U13 team that is playing in the 4-3-3 formation played it's first tournament this weekend. I think it's very beneficial to have an early season tournament so that the team plays three or four games over the course of a weekend. Generally I'm not a fan of the current tournament system and feel that they put too much emphasis on who has the fittest team rather than who has the best team. But the advantage is that you can spot areas that need to be worked on in one game and then come back and focus on those in the next game.
After an early season tournament I usually have two or three weeks of sessions in mind based things that we need to improve on from those games. This weekend we were clearly the strongest team but we ran into a team that knew our players and system of play. They sat in and played a 4-5-1 (which looked more like a 4-6-0 at times) and just looked to catch us on the counter attack. They were successful in keeping us out because we
Continue readingCoaches like to talk about combination play but one thing to remember is the players MUST understand the purpose of combination play which is to beat the defenders. While there might be a few occasions when the primary purpose of combinations is simply to maintain possession (an example might be at the end of the
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