Auto-generated captions — may contain the odd mishearing. Click a time to jump there.
0:00 well hello coaches coach KW finally back again for the last of this three-part series of uh coaching footall for Soccer Coaches uh this one took a little bit
0:10 longer than I expected uh it's been quite a month uh on the 5th of December I flew out the um go to MLS nextfest watch my son play with the u16s and I've
0:22 been sick since the moment I landed in California basically and then came back home it's been quite the uh quite the ordeal through the holidays uh even at
0:30 this point I can't hear more than maybe 60% out of one of these ears because it's still blocked but Happy New Year to all hope you are way better than I am or
0:39 are been better than I am uh on the mend so today I'm going to take a look at four activities that I love to do with my footall teams some are very
0:49 traditional and maybe some are a little bit different but I'm hoping that they'll inspire you maybe give you some ideas of stuff that can do again I'm a
0:55 soccer coach who plays footall in the winter to get better at soccer so I'm not a foot purist in any way shape or form but I found these activities the
1:04 kids enjoy them I've done them with multiple teams guest coaching and with my team um and everybody seems to get something out of it so I'm going to jump
1:12 into it right now and hope you enjoy it and the first one is very simple this is the basic setup for line passing so you've probably seen this perhaps maybe
1:21 you do this even Outdoors where you'll have uh two lines uh you need at least three players to do this uh so that it can run continuously
1:30 um I've got a ball and I've got folks on either side and basically the idea is the ball is past this player and then this player follows their pass to go to
1:39 the end this player receives the ball passes it follows that pass etc etc pretty straightforward but what in foot soole because it is a bit different in
1:48 terms of receiving the ball that you receive with the sole of your foot it's a great way to focus on receiving that ball with the sole of your foot letting
1:56 it pushing it out with your foot once you received it and making a good pass footle balls as I've said before are very unforgiving you really have to have
2:05 good technique in your forward passing in order to be accurate and this really just isolates it it's very simplistic but you can do lots of different things
2:13 you can add a cone in so now the players when they receive the ball instead of just passing it they first dribble do a One V one move around the cone with the
2:22 ball then make the pass you can do all sorts of variations you can add a second ball and the players pass the ball to each other or maybe they dribble toward
2:32 each other and instead of going around a cone they go around each other doing a One V one move and then they play the ball to the next person in line lots of
2:40 different ways to think about this but again very straightforward very simple but the idea is you're focusing on the technique that you want them to do and
2:49 they have no other distractions but to do this and to do it well the second setup for the second activity is 2v2 to end zones so this is very much like
3:00 playing half court basketball uh on a court with friends or whatever uh basically what we do is we find some way to make a line uh here on the footall
3:10 court there are there are these L these dots on a lot of basketball courts you might have the top of the three-point Arc you might have volleyball lines
3:18 painted on your court there's all sorts of lines painted on courts when you're out there some way or another whether you need to use cones or not you want to
3:25 find a a line to break this up so that the space in here that they playing 2v2 and isn't too large and the idea is when the players with the ball are beyond
3:35 that line they're in a safe Zone and you can see I have two teams set up going uh two groups players right now playing at the same time so once they get this ball
3:45 oh here the player with the ball can't be tackled by this player they can't chase them so it's a little bit to catch a breather and reset and the whole idea
3:53 here is what they're looking to do is they're looking to find a way to combine and play 2v2 and the idea is they want to either receive a
4:03 pass or dribble into this end zone so basically most basketball courts the line at the end of the Court obviously isn't right against the wall because they need room you know when they play
4:14 basketball to be able to uh go through and under the hoop for uh when the ball goes out of play so the idea is you're looking to play the ball into that zone
4:23 and receive it put your foot on the ball or dribble into that space to gain a point if the other team wins the ball they need to try and get
4:32 themselves out into the safe Zone and the orange team now is counter pressing they're trying to get the ball back but once this team gets out past the safe
4:40 Zone they can take a breather everybody resets and then they continue to play so here's some live action again blurred out but here you're going to see
4:50 coming towards the camera the uh one of the players going to make a run once they get free for that player up in the safe Zone makes that pass through and
5:00 player stops in the end zone for a point in this one here you'll see uh same sort of thing but this time player tries to play that end zone pass and they weren't
5:08 successful and then they kick it out of bounds and they make a clever run after the fact they realize like oops um you know they caught the other team sort of
5:17 napping because now the ball's gone out of bounds the partners come over here he gets the ball kicks to that player and makes a run across the court they don't
5:25 pick him up and he scores a point the next setup for this is a four square or fill in the blank so what I do is I set
5:32 the team uh groups of four up so I set them up in a square um the really the distances you don't want it this to be huge but the idea here is you've set
5:43 players up in a pretty simple straightforward Square maybe they're 10 yards away from each other and the player with the ball can choose to pass the ball to any other player but the
5:54 interesting piece of this is when this player plays the ball they now leave this space and can go anywhere so if this player goes here somebody has to
6:06 fill in the Gap the hole that they've left in before this player can now play another pass so now maybe this player pays the ball here and they decide to go
6:16 here now the question could be is does this player go here or does this player go here and this player goes diagonal and the whole purpose of this exercise
6:27 is to get your players to start to recognize that as players move in rotations somebody has to find the open space and move into it so this isn't
6:36 necessarily a speed passing exercise they're not trying to go as fast as possible One Touch passing across the idea is the ball moves and once the ball
6:45 is there the real action is when this player to set moves to go to a open space what are the other teammates going to do is this player going to run across
6:55 if this player does then here that player goes there and the idea is by the time this player now has control of the ball they wait till everybody's in
7:04 position and they go so it's not necessarily a passing exercise it's a vision exercise it's an awareness exercise so we'll take a look at that as the kids do it the kids really struggle
7:15 at first with this and then they begin to enjoy it and that's the great part about it because they start to figure out oh you know we now have to start
7:23 looking for each other and it works you could even the player who plays this ball could go to where the the player who has that ball is it does cause them
7:33 complications because now who's going to go to that spot they can't go with the ball so usually what I say is you can't go to where you've played the ball you
7:42 have to go to somebody else uh otherwise they stop to fight with each other uh when it goes in that regard and the F favorite activity at
7:53 least for my kids obviously is scrimmaging and scrimmaging is a vital part of any practice because you want them to be able to rehearse the game as
8:02 it is to play it as best as possible in the situation that they're going to do in real life so that they work on all the things combined here we're playing I
8:13 believe 3v3 I'm making up uh the numbers on this team so ignore the grossly overweight man who's playing with kids 40 plus years younger than him uh not my
8:24 best uh weight nor uh um Fitness level here but that's okay the kids enjoy it I enjoy it but I've been doing practice games and scrimmages with my kids in my
8:36 practices since I picked them up as third graders Outdoors as you should in any practice and we do lots of those different welcome games so my kids are
8:44 really good at taking the scrimmage seriously and when they start to mess around I remind them like if you're not going to take the scrimmage seriously we're going to move on to something else
8:53 and that usually is enough for them to straighten out and work at the right things because these kids are working on those 1 V ons the 2v tws we saw the
9:02 rotations we saw in the four square thing passing or receiving all the things that make the game work they work hard at it here and it's effective uh
9:14 it's a really small space we're in an elementary school gym so this court is actually much smaller than even the courts that they play games on which
9:23 makes it even more difficult for them which enhances their skills but they're now rehearsing all the different parts of the game uh like I said I think we're
9:31 playing 3v3 here and the keepers are being a little bit more adventurous than usual but that's part of the fun so if you can do the scrimmage great and you
9:40 can see on our court the mats behind the basketball hoops act as our goals because they're almost exactly a footsal goal size so I don't have to drag out
9:49 the popup uh Nets which is super handy and this gym is super tiny the out of bounds area is maybe 18 in all the way around so it's super tight uh parents
9:59 can't even come in to watch practice cuz they literally be in the firing line the entire time but again scrimmages it's the kids's favorite and if it's done
10:09 well it's a super effective tool like I said sometimes 30 45 minutes of scrimmage and an hour and a half practice as long as they're working hard
10:17 and doing the right things that's perfectly fine with me and they love it well I hope you find those activities interesting and inspiring uh they really do work well uh I found with my kids uh
10:29 for all different sorts of reasons uh you know the the the simple line passing might be you know simple but it's effective because it really lets you
10:38 focus on the technique you want them to work on and then you can add in different variations like I said you can add in a second ball you can add in a
10:45 cone you can put in requirements that they have to do one V one moves all the different things that make it valuable for Learning and refining that technique
10:54 with a footle ball and that passing technique so I hope you found this useful if you did uh please like share subscribe really helps the channel uh I
11:03 know it's been a slow burn we're going to be going back to more 7v7 activities and 9v9 activities soon uh as the spring season is going to start ramping up in a
11:14 couple of months for a lot of us so uh until that time I hope you're all well Happy New Year and we'll see you real soon bye