Football/Soccer Session (Academy Sessions): Week 9- Session 2- Dominating 1v1's

Technical 1

Key Factors

The purpose of this drill is to engage the players with the session, ensure repetition of the Nomads skills and turns and to ensure players are being exposed to as many touches of the ball as possible

Organisation

Set up a square and place one cone in the middle. Players are thn placed evenly at the four corners, with players at the two bottom corners having balls.

On the coaches command a player form each of the bottom corners will run with the ball towards the central cone, they then complete a Nomads move of the coaches choice at the cone, they then explode away from the cone towards the top corner of the same side.

They then pass the ball to a player in that conrer, this player then runs with the ball as quickly as they can back to the start for the next player to then repeat. The passing player joins the line on the top corner.

Play for 2 minutes and then allow the players to swap sides to ensure they practice both sides.

Opposed session

Key Factors

The purpose of this session is mainly to help coach defending in 1v1 situations and to coach the players in details the 4 S' of defending.

Shut Down

Slow Down

Sit Down

Show Down

Organisation

Set up a number of channels (depending on player numbers), to cater for groups of 3 or 4 players.

2 players stand on one side of the channel and the other player/s stand the other. The players at the bottom start with the ball.

The first player plays a pass across the channel to their opponent. This player then must take on the passine player in a 1v1 battle, in an attempt to get the ball across the line.

Once the play is finished, the defender will position themselves at the opposite end to become the attacker and the attacker joins the defenders line.

Players get a point every time they can beat the defender.

Dutch Masters

Key Factors

To continue along the topic of players taking reponsibility for theit own success, this session will finish with a game of Dutch Masters

Organisation

6v6 or 7v7 game with goalkeepers and normal rules (kick ins from the side).

We will assume this game is 6v6.

The coach should have a sheet of paper or notebook with the names of each player in the session written on. Next to their name, assign each player a number between 1-12. Tell the players tehur number, they must keep this number throughout.

Select the teams for the first game using the numbers, for e.g. 1,2,3,4,5,6 v 7,8,9,10,11,12.

The game lasts 3 minutes. Each player on the winning team gets 1 point. Mark this next to each player on the sheet of paper.

Select different team, for example 2,4,6,8,10,12 v 1,3,5,7,9,11 and repeat the 3 minute game giving a point to each player on the winning team.

Continue to play a number of games using different combination of team selections. At the end, find out which player top the list in terms of points aquired.