Football/Soccer Session (Moderate): Warm-Up Passing Drills (Start Time: 2019-11-24 19:00:00)

Barcelona Star (10 mins)

2) The Barcelona Star

Key Factors

A deceptively simple but effective passing drill which has the added attraction for players of its association with Barcelona

Organisation

Mark out 5 cones in the star shape shown above.

The gap between the cones (i.e. the distance the pass has to travel) can be adjusted dependent upon age & ability of your players

The drill needs a minimum of 6 players; one on each cone and one extra on Cone 1 to start the drill.

It is a simple "pass & follow your pass" exercise and the ball flows from 1-5 in sequence.

Extra complexity is added by introducing a second ball (starting from Cone 3)

This requires communication and timing to ensure balls/players do not collide.

Supposedly, the maximum number of balls the Barcelona team can utilise in this exercise is three - so the challenge to our team is to match that.

(I usually introduce the third ball at either Cone 4 or 5)

Y-Drill or Wine Glass

4) Y-Drill or Wine Glass

Set Up

Every team I've coached in the last few years will have been expecting this one - the "Wine Glass" or "Y-Drill"

I usually mark out a distance of 15 yards from 1 to 2 and another 15 yards from 2 to 3 (and 2 to 4)

Organisation

The exercise starts with the player at 1 who passes to 2 and follows his pass.

The key stage is at 2; the player calls for the pass to be on say his left side; controls the ball with his left foot then plays a right foot pass to 3 (and follows his pass)

In the initial stage, 3 dribbles the ball in to 1

The player now at 1 passes to 2's right side; 2 controls the ball with his right foot and passes left-footed to 4 (and follows his pass)

We have now created a mechanism where passes from 2 alternate between passing to 3 or 4

NB Because players are always following their pass, the next player at 1 may not remember which side of 2 he is meant to pass to - who will know?

The answer of course is the player now at 2 - he needs to communicate.

So now the drill involves passing, movement and communication

Progression 1

- a one-two between 2 and 3/4 (i.e. depending which one we have passed to)

Progression 2

- a one-two between 2 and 3/4 is followed by

- a one-two between 3/4 and the player now moving from 1 to 2

Progression 3

- another progression is that Player 2 simply does a "bounce ball" back to 1 who then plays the ball to the "winger" (i.e. 3 or 4) and the sequence then follows Progression 2 above.

Coaching Points

The whole idea of this warm-up is to give the players plenty of touches and a mix of short and long passes.

- when we're looking at one-twos remember "Don't go past the ball"

We are looking for quality of pass, timing of pass, tempo and good communication.

If each stage is run for 2 minutes this will be a good warm-up for 6-8 minutes and give each player 30-40 touches