Football/Soccer Session (Academy Sessions): Technical Ball Control (Start Time: 2022-04-14 17:00:00)

Stage 1 ( 15 mins ). (15 mins)

Adaptations (Progressions & Regressions):

Light warm up exercise where the players have to get plenty of touches on the ball. Space can be as big as you like however for this particular drill I have gone with a 20x20 metre grid. 

You will require 9 cones for this drill, 4 balls minimum ( depending on how many dribbles and turns you would like ). 6-8 players is a good number so it keeps the drill flowing. Too few players can make this drill a stop/start exercise. 

Challenges, Conditions or Targets:

The aim of the drill is to keep the ball close to your body with plenty of touches on both feet with head up us much as possible and becoming comfortable moving a long the floor with ball at feet. Encourage to use different parts of the foot to control with ( inside, outside, rollover, drag etc ) just as long as the player doesn't lose control of the ball or generates too much pace on the ball which would be hard to regain control once it has gotten away from you in a drill like this. 

The idea is the players ( start at A ) go and get a ball from the designated areas and dribble it down to an orange cone, they then leave the ball there and move on to the next ball repeating the same method until they get to the last ball and leave it at the flag ( B ). On the final cone with the ball the coach should be positioned here to add a new ball to the cone so that this keeps momentum going. The more little touches the better, it is not a sprint exercise. Once the first couple of turns have happened, mix it up a bit, left foot only, zig-zag, add a step over, move the shoulders more drop the shoulder then heading in a different direction. Encourage the players to be imaginative with the ball during the exercise. 

Stage 3 ( 25 mins ). (25 mins)

Adaptations (Progressions & Regressions):

2 mini goals required for this drill along with 6 poles, 6 balls and 6 players on a 30x30 metre grid.

Challenges, Conditions or Targets:

The idea behind this exercise is to do what has been done in the first 2 stages of the session but adapt them now to a faster paced competition where the players been split into 2 groups ( 3v3 ) and have to dribble the ball up to the poles where they then need to get a good turn around the pole in before heading back down through the 2 poles and scoring in the mini goal. They are not allowed to put the ball in the net before going past the 2 poles. This competition will give the players a bigger challenge as they will not won't to come out of the drill on the losing team. Once a couple of turns have been taken and you feel the drill is running its course add 2 more defenders to the drill or take a player out of each team to act as a defender if you have not got enough defenders for the exercise. The defenders will have to try and hold the player off from getting through the 2 poles, once they have gone through the poles the defender is not allowed beyond that point.