Soccer Awareness: Basic Principles of Development (One Touch Play)

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Soccer Awareness: Basic Principles of Development (One Touch Play)

Linking foot preparation, body position and mental preparation to the technique involved in making a one touch pass leads us to a discussion on one touch play and its benefits.                     

One touch play teaches the value of being able to take your eye off the ball when keeping your eye on the ball can be a disadvantage.

To make this work, players need to have good teamwork and positional sense and therefore must work hard for each other.

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Awareness One Touch Theme Developmental Training: Incorporating Movement Off the Ball

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Awareness One Touch Theme Developmental Training: Incorporating Movement Off the Ball

Players are generally all very good at playing using many touches; that is; dribbles, turns and running with the ball, that is more technical training / playing.  

But often not so good at one touch quick thinking and quick decision making training, that is more skill training / playing.

Hence why we must increasingly do this training with them.

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Passing Game for Spatial Awareness Development

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Passing Game for Spatial Awareness Development

Players have the ball at their feet for approximately 5 minutes out of 90. What do they do the rest of the 85 minutes? They must learn to move off the ball and to move into open passing lanes to be open at all times to help the player on the ball or the next player on the ball. Here is a great session to teach this.

We can use many upright cones to represent opponents rather than mannequins. We set the cones up in triangles and diamonds. We ask players to position between the cones in the best space available. Try to balance their position to find the best space in the middle of the triangle or diamond of cones (opponents). Players beyond the ball try to position in triangles and diamonds of support also.

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Youth Soccer Training & Development: Myelin & Training - The Scientific Concept in Skill Development

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Youth Soccer Training & Development: Myelin & Training - The Scientific Concept in Skill Development

In this article, I explain the scientific background to the Soccer Awareness training method. A previous article introduced Awareness Training and explained how it helps players develop skills more rapidly than traditional training methods. In this article I want to explain the scientific background to Awareness Training and how the approach speeds up and improves decision making and the thought processes in soccer.

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Defensive Pressing to Push Up Without Touching the Ball

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Defensive Pressing to Push Up Without Touching the Ball

This is a great session to teach the players and shows how they can push opponents back even when THE OPPONENTS have the ball. We will try to push them back without even touching the ball ourselves. We start on the edge of our box we try to get our back three up to the half way line. Set Conditions will help us do this to start the process off.

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Off the Shoulder Movement and How to Combat It

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Off the Shoulder Movement and How to Combat It

(3) Watches the ball and allows the wide player (B) to get beyond him. A ball in behind always beats him. Centrally the centre back (4) does the same, he watches the ball and the striker comes off his shoulder and he gets caught with the ball in behind him. This will cost us in unless we work on it with the team.

This often goes wrong. Here’s how you can fix it. 

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Quick Break Transition 2 v 2 Game

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Quick Break Transition 2 v 2 Game

A 2 v 2 game going to 4 goals. The team who scores stays on and must quickly defend the 2 new players coming in. We are working on Quick break and counter attack, Quick one and two touch passing and Positioning to open up passing lanes and getting between defenders to pass the ball in early.

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The Three Zone Directional Game - Training Center Exclusive

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The Three Zone Directional Game - Training Center Exclusive

This game is based on possessing the ball and the movement off it.

We have several progressions we can use to challenge the players these include:

  1. A simple Warm up to get the idea going

  2. Playing through the thirds with targets

  3. Playing through the thirds without targets

  4. Players must stay in their own thirds so we have 3 combination games going at once

  5. We can add free players therefore creating overload situations

  6. More!

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Developing Attacking Play in the Opponents Defending Third

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Developing Attacking Play in the Opponents Defending Third

The attacking team has the ball. This is the start position of the game situation.

The idea is to have this phase, being the attacking one, and working on various ideas of movement, rotation and interchange to try to score.

You can focus on this until success is achieved from an attacking point of view.

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Teaching Movement “Off the Ball” Through the Transition Directional Target Game - Training Center Exclusive

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Teaching Movement “Off the Ball” Through the Transition Directional Target Game - Training Center Exclusive

With this session we are working on the following:

  1. Creating Space by running off the ball to receive or to help a teammate receive.

  2. Quality of Passing; long and short to targets and to teammates.

  3. Support play: working angles and distances incorporating switching play using the side players.

  4. Receiving and Turning in tight situations and dribbling in 1 v 1 situations.

  5. Quick decision making is required in this session because the numbers are small, the area tight and the transitions rapid.

As a coach you can work in this session how to defend properly as individuals and a team or how to attack properly as individuals and a team.

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Quick Transition Directional Play Promoting Passing and Movement Off the Ball

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Quick Transition Directional Play Promoting Passing and Movement Off the Ball

This session improves quick decision making, tight control because the spaces are small to play in, and thinking in advance due to the switch in direction of the play. You can also work on the defending players.

 

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How To Set-up A Small-Sided Game

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How To Set-up A Small-Sided Game

Small-sided games are less than 11 v 11 and can be any number from 3 v 3 to 9 v 9. The general sizes of a game to establish team coaching themes are usually 6 v 6 or 8 v 8. Here are two examples of set ups for these sizes of games and information on U.S. Soccer's small-sided games standards.

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