Spatial awareness and
support.
“Spread out!!” one of
the most common commands shouted out in youth football training sessions,
usually by coaches of younger age groups (6-10) but sometimes even heard in
adults football. Obviously if you have to keep yelling it out your players
clearly aren’t learning why/when they may need to find space. And if this is
the case you need to help them understand. My buzzword is “space” I don’t like
spread out so much as it may force a player in a perfectly good space to move
into a bad one or just go further away.
A good way to get your players thinking about finding good
space.
Example below is a
session that I carried out with my u8s team, but this can absolutely be adapted
for any ages..
Start by taking an
area (square/rectangle) and dividing it into a series of squares (vary this
depending number of players) get players into groups of 3 or 4 and get them
started with a simple challenge to get things started; which team can get their
ball to visit all the squares the quickest?
I keep things competitive
with this group as they become uninterested with unopposed games.
6 square version was used in the session
After letting them have a go then try to come up with ideas
as team and try it a couple more times we discussed some ideas as a group key
questions to let them think about: They came to the idea that its quicker to
pass it between the squares. So some questions:
·
- If you’ve got the ball do you want your team in the same square as you?? Why/why not?
- · Does it make it faster if they are in different squares?
They decided that having someone so close to them wasn’t
very helpful for passing. So I set a challenge to the players:
Try and be in a different square to someone on your team.
After this we started to look at finding space to support, using
a piece of A3 we looked at where the 2 players off the ball can be the most
help (squares next to the player on the ball) and spoke about why we might not
always want team mates to be far away.
Challenge: Try to get in a square next to the player on the
ball. Now players would have to start thinking about moving off the ball to
become good support.
After running through and giving the player plenty of
unopposed rounds we moved into an unopposed part. Having 9 players we made a
3v1 and a 4v1. Now the players had to move the ball through as many squares as
possible without the defender getting the ball (we came up with a point for
every square used and minus 2 if the defender got it)
Now we looked at why being so close together can be a bad
thing (the defender can cut out support easier) and where we might want support
(a player either side if possible, to make it difficult for defender to cut
passes out) after rotating players there was some good success by the groups
and we moved onto our game.
We adjusted our 6 squares so that the field was divided into
6 for the game, to give players some reference to finding space/ supporting.
Finding “good space” is different to finding space; you
might have space but it may not be helping us.
Challenge player to try and not “hide” behind opponents –
try to see the ball.
That’s just a quick overview of the session. By adapting the challenges, questions it can be tailored to any group. Its also important to note that this was the
first in a series of sessions focusing on support and finding space,
progressing onto directional practices that relate to the game.
If you have any questions please contact me via email or via
@dwalsh_91
These drills were made using the FA Coaches App, which is
available to download via the app store.
