Welcome to the Soccer Awareness Coaches Corner. Browse through soccer drills, small sided games, tactical thoughts, full sessions and a variety of resources. Posts marked “Training Center Exclusive” are for members only.
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.
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.
Structuring a Training Session
It would be useful if we all worked at structuring our sessions along the same lines to ensure we provide the correct coaching for all the players in all the teams. The following presentation is one way to set it up and it helps you organize your time management for a session.
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.
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.
How We Set Our Teams Up At 8 v 8
This is a recommended set-up to relate the field positions of the 8 v 8 players in the 3-3-1 to the 4-2-3-1 formation for the 11 v 11.
One Word Commands at the Back
This is a wonderful way to teach your team how to move around the field with “one word commands” that are fast and simple and everyone immediately knows what to do per each call.
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.
Teaching Movement “Off the Ball” Through the Transition Directional Target Game - Training Center Exclusive
With this session we are working on the following:
Creating Space by running off the ball to receive or to help a teammate receive.
Quality of Passing; long and short to targets and to teammates.
Support play: working angles and distances incorporating switching play using the side players.
Receiving and Turning in tight situations and dribbling in 1 v 1 situations.
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
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.
Developing Play with a Defending Back Four
The session is designed to show how to work on team shape building up from a back four only. Side cones are 25 to 30 yards apart as are the defenders and the coach. The coach moves with the ball and the defenders mirror the movement maintaining the distances between them.
Academy Level: A Fun Awareness Warm-up for Improving Peripheral Vision
Use this warm up to work on awareness of where other players are (in this case all the other players are defenders trying to win possession of your ball) whilst maintaining possession of the ball ensuring players are looking around away from their own ball.
The Roles and Responsibilities of Each Player in 9 v 9
Here we are looking at players 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9; 10 and 11 of the 11 v 11 and we will look at them in this particular formation of 1-3-3-1-1. You could of course use different formations at 9 v 9 but I'm basing it on this one because it’s closer to the set up of the 11 v 11 so it transitions easily into it.
Individual Striker Movements Off the Shoulder Part 4 - Exercise to Practice the Opposite Move
Striker (E) comes short and shows for the ball asking for a pass from (D). Defender (F) follows. Midfielder (D) passes to (C), (D) then passes over the top into (E)’s path as he / she spins. Defender must play passively. To continue the work once player (E) receives the ball they must beat (F) back to the touchline. Players (C) and (D) go to the middle and the next two take their place. As the pass is going from (D) to (C) the striker shouts the code word and spins to receive the pass as player (C) is about to pass it. The shout must be early to (C) to make the pass at the exact same time (E) is spinning to receive it.
Individual Striker Movements Off the Shoulder Part 2
This is the usual position of the strikers, they stand alongside the defender and do not open the angle up to help them receive a pass, and these are the disadvantages to this.