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Staying on the ball!

Patrick Dalton

I'd love to ask those coaches on here for some help with drills to improve 'staying on the ball'. I fine one of our biggest areas for my u10 girl group to work on as a group is how to deal with pressure from attackers and or defenders when on the ball. Whether that be an attacker trying to keep the ball to create a goalscoring chance or a defender trying to keep the ball from a goal kick or similar in a defensive area with the swarm of players oncoming! Can anyone share any drills they love to use fro this?

  • 0

    If its individual players, then games like cat and mouse as warm up games every session. Then team games, I think there's one called thw stadium game.

    Look on YouTube for Pete sturgess snd stay on the ball. Start there.

    If its in the context of playing out from the keeper, then lots of touches in SSG's and over the border type games. Two teams of 5 and send one over to steal the other teams ball.

    Once that gets easy, send two etc

    Then play out drills with a goal for the pressing team to score in and 2 mini goals on the half way foe the playing out team.

    And so on

  • 0

    Hi Patrick. It's a great question. Young players need time on the ball and encouraging not to kick it away. At this age dribbling should still take president over passing. Playing lots of 1v1, 2v2 games when practicing helps. Give them opportunities to dribble and really reward it, even if they loose the ball or conceed a goal. But they need to be matched up and as much as possible in mini games to allow them to dribble out of areas and towards a goal/target. If this ethos is taken into their matches, and everyone is on board (including parents) then over time they will  improve. But it takes time and they will loose matches because of it. It's important that they don't receive mixed messages like 'be patient/take your time' and then in the same game 'clear it.'

    There are lots of ideas on the England Learning page.  Including practices and articles.

    learn.englandfootball.com/.../Dribbling-session-dare-to-dribble

    Look up anything on Pete Sturgess too on YouTube. He headed up the FA for this age group and now has his own wwebsite.He is a huge advocate for staying on and mastering the ball.

    Good luck

    Steve Gibbs - FA Coach Developer