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How much ball mastery can you actually do in one hour per week?

Stephen Ford

Hi,

I coach a girls U12 team. We've been together as a team since U7.

I have always had a large focus on ball mastery, SSGs and getting lots of touches during training. However, some of our girls have been coming for years and yet still struggle with very basic skills like dribbling, receiving and kicking the ball effectively.

We are blessed with a few good athletes, and at 5v5 and 7v7 we won the majority of our games. Last season at 9v9 we won 1, drew 2 and lost 15. I spent the season trying to work out what had changed. I dropped us down a league, and our first match was just a repeat of last season.

I know it's not about winning but it's pretty miserable when you lose all the time.

Other teams players just seem to be much better at these basic skills and I don't know what to do differently. I really feel like the players need to practise outside of our one our training to improve, but the majority don't despite my efforts to encourage them. One hour per week just doesn't seem enough to get sufficient gains in this area.

Any advice appreciated.

Parents

  • Hi Stephen,

    A really great question and I think it leans into maximising the time you have with your players at training and on a matchday to help them learn about the game whilst becoming more skilful in when attacking and defending. It is also great that you are encouraging them to play and enjoy practicing outside of training, but it might not always be possible for a variety of reasons. 

    You can build technical elements like Turning, Receiving, Passing etc. into your sessions and give the girls lots of repetition of this (whilst still linking to learning about the game) as well as helping them with ideas of different techniques and when and how to do it (realism and relevance).

    For example for receiving and turning techniques this is a good session I have linked below, that would allow you to go into detail, give the players lots of opportunities and scenarios to practice (can be without opposition to start but it is then important to build this in) and then you can build it into an SSG (but maintain the focus e.g. 1 bonus point every time you beat a player or progress play using a turn):

    https://learn.englandfootball.com/sessions/resources/2024/Turning-session-improving-turning-techniques#:~:text=This%20session%20aims%20to%20support,enhance%20their%20turning%20skills 

    Let me know what you think and if this helps!

Reply

  • Hi Stephen,

    A really great question and I think it leans into maximising the time you have with your players at training and on a matchday to help them learn about the game whilst becoming more skilful in when attacking and defending. It is also great that you are encouraging them to play and enjoy practicing outside of training, but it might not always be possible for a variety of reasons. 

    You can build technical elements like Turning, Receiving, Passing etc. into your sessions and give the girls lots of repetition of this (whilst still linking to learning about the game) as well as helping them with ideas of different techniques and when and how to do it (realism and relevance).

    For example for receiving and turning techniques this is a good session I have linked below, that would allow you to go into detail, give the players lots of opportunities and scenarios to practice (can be without opposition to start but it is then important to build this in) and then you can build it into an SSG (but maintain the focus e.g. 1 bonus point every time you beat a player or progress play using a turn):

    https://learn.englandfootball.com/sessions/resources/2024/Turning-session-improving-turning-techniques#:~:text=This%20session%20aims%20to%20support,enhance%20their%20turning%20skills 

    Let me know what you think and if this helps!

Children
  • in reply to Emily Hill

    Thanks Emily. The session you linked looks really good fun. I'm sure it will be engaging so I will give it a go and let you know.

    I guess the problem I see is if the girls don't touch a football from one training session to the next then the gains of any ball mastery are too small to make a tangible difference to the team.