30: Grow Coach Newsletter
Football Coaching: Developing your coaching craft.
A warm welcome from JustCoachMD. We are happy to have you on board. We are looking forward to providing you with helpful content.
Here is what to expect:
Coaching Craft: Using multi-ball activities.
Full 60 Minute Practice: Receiving to turn and create scoring chances.
Coach Project: Design a multi-ball activity.
Your coaching craft is a set of skills that you can master and use to enhance the quality of what you do. It is like a menu of ways you can, adapt, manipulate and influence the players in your session.
Multi Ball Activities:
What is multi-ball?
It involves the addition of a 2nd or 3rd ball into a practice. The coach can control the pitch location and the timing of introducing the 2nd ball. This allows the coach to manipulate their practice to ensure the players are challenged.
Here are 4 reasons you should use multi-ball activities:
Tempo: The practice intensity increases so players have to make more decisions in a shorter time. This has a knock-on effect of improving standards of performance. Players are forced to make better choices under pressured conditions.
Reactions: Once ball 1 is completed the players must respond quickly to ball 2. This means that attacking and defensive transitions are practised naturally in game-like situations.
Physicality: There are fitness benefits to adding additional footballs to practice activities. Players will have to run more and cover extra ground. It will involve speeding up and slowing down more frequently. There will be lots of directional changes.
Focus: The players need to look away from the ball to anticipate what might happen next. Once the 1st ball is finished players must anticipate, Where is the 2nd ball going to go? Do I have to attack or Defend? What might be expected of me?
Practical Multi-Ball Tips
For coaches interested in using multi-ball practices, it might be useful to integrate the following:
Ball Banks: Stacking up the footballs into one location so the coach can fire in another ball as soon as it leaves the pitch. This ramps up the transitional elements of practices.
Pro Tip: Serve the ball where it has left the field so players are in realistic positions to respond.
Carry a Ball or Two: The coach could carry 1-2 balls under their arms while coaching to use as triggers for players to respond to. For example, if the 1st ball leaves the field the coach could hold up the 2nd ball and give the players 5 seconds to pick up a good position.
Pro Tip: Drop the ball in locations where you want to check or coach something. If you want players to play through MF then drop footballs centrally and wide in these locations to observe how players respond.
Ball Positions: Place footballs at set points around the pitch and allow teams to work through the sets of footballs to for example a play-out ball, a set piece ball, or a through ball.
Pro Tip: The coach controls which ball each team goes after so they can check player reactions to various ball positions on the field.
Ball Collectors: If a player misses or kicks the ball out they have to go and collect it and hand it back to the coach before joining back into a practice. This helps to create overload/underload situations. Teams are then challenged to exploit or contain the situations.
A full 60-minute practice will follow this detail. Take a look at the practices and decide where the 2nd and 3rd balls could be added to create different challenges for players.
“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas
Full Practice: Receiving to Turn and Score
2v2 | Receiving to Turn and Score.
⚽️ Created On: @SSPlanner
Aim:
Receiving to turn, connect and create scoring chances.
Set-Up:
Add a 10-yard zone onto the edge of an 18-yard box.
Place two mini-goals on either side of the box and have a 🟢 GK protecting the larger goal.
⚫️: Start as the attacking team.
🔴: Act as the defending team.
How to Play:
The ⚫️s and 🔴s position themselves as shown.
The deepest ⚫️ plays into their teammate, as soon as this pass is played the game becomes live and a 2v2 toward the larger goal.
⚫️s are trying to score in the large goal past 🟢 GK.
🔴s are trying to score in the two mini-goals.
🚧 Constraints:
🏆Reward: If ⚫️s are successful they earn a 2nd ball ⚽️.
🚫Restrict: Use a moving offside line, sometimes making it shorter and other times making it longer.
👨🏫Review: Check if the ball's receivers scan when it travels to them.
3v3 | Receiving to Turn to Score.
⚽️ Created On: @SSPlanner
Aim:
Receiving to turn and create scoring chances.
Set-Up:
Add a 10-yard zone onto the edge of an 18-yard box.
Place two mini-goals on either side of the box and have a 🟢 GK protecting the larger goal.
⚫️: Start as the attacking team.
🔴: Act as the defending team.
🟢: GK for the defending team.
How to Play:
The ⚫️ on the side of the box serves to their central player. The game becomes a live 3v3 as soon as the pass is played.
⚫️s are trying to score in the large goal past 🟢 GK.
🔴s are trying to intercept the ball and score in the mini-goals.
🚧 Constraints:
🏆Reward: Each time the attackers score they get another ball to go again.
🚫Restrict: The 18-yard line is the offside line. (Timing of run).
👨🏫Review: Scan to check where the pressure is coming from, and combine using a pass into space for a runner.
8v7 | Conditioned Game | Playing Through the Thirds.
⚽️ Created On: @SSPlanner
Aim:
Play through the thirds to score.
Set-Up:
On a 45 by 20 yard pitch break up the field into thirds.
The first zone is a 4v2 (🟢 GK is the 4th player), the middle third is a 3v3 and the final third starts as a 1v2 but 2 MF and 1 defender can move into it.
⚫️s: They are the attacking build-up team.
🔴s: ThepPressing team.
How to Play:
⚫️s get 5 balls ⚽️ to attack with.
🟢 starts the practice by playing into the first third, after two passes the ⚫️s can progress into the middle third.
⚫️s in the middle third are looking to play into their attacker in the final third to join in and create a 3v3 to score in the mini goals.
If the 🔴s win the ball the game becomes open (players not restricted to zones) and the 🔴s try to score in the larger goals past the 🟢 GK.
🔂 Rotate the teams so 🔴s get to attack.
🚧 Constraints:
🏆 Reward: If the ⚫️s score without the opponent getting a touch they get a bonus ⚽️💨 to attack with.
🚫 Restrict: A time limit ⏱️ to get through the thirds - if the time runs out the 🔴s get the ball.
👨🏫 Review: Can the attackers pass or dribble through the opponent’s pressure?
“There is no pressure when you are making a dream come true.” – Neymar
Coach Project
Objective: Design a multi-ball practice to work on any attacking topic.
Considerations:
Where will you position yourself to serve in the 2nd ball?
How might the players react to the 2nd ball
Who is involved and how do they know when to react?
Please feel free to get in touch or share your ideas, actions, and interventions. We would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, post them here; we will do our best to answer them.
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