Playing from the back (Foundation Ages)

A few years ago the FA introduced a new rule to mini soccer; "the retreat line". A rule that is now used by every grassroots league in the country for its 5 and 7 a side format games. The rule is simple, on an opponents goal kick you must retreat to the half way line and when they take it you can press as normal. An initiative taken from other countries to encourage our young players to play from the back. Speaking to other coaches it seems to have divided opinions on whether it is a good step from the FA or not, some argue that it's just not realistic. Personally I feel that it has it strengths, the majority of games that I've seen teams are looking to pay short from goal kicks and attempt to play through the thirds, great! On the flip side, this attempting to play from the back leads to mistakes (going to happen with young players) and results in conceding goals through a misplaced pass or bad touch - goals that are not really down to poor defending or good attacking play. Either way it's something we now have to deal with and when planning practices it's something we need to consider to ensure that our practice is relating to our game.

Teams that I coach have been caught out a number of times trying to play out from the back, which often leads to a straight 1v1 with the player who has won possession in our third. This has prompted me to think about practices we can do to build or confidence and success at playing out from the back.

Playing out from the back

Good passing (from the GK) and good receiving skills are essential for successfully playing out from the back. With younger players we still need to spend time working in technical, high returns practice.

Set up

Use marker cones to give players starting points shown below. GK has a number of footballs.
Players need to transfer their footballs to their target player, who looks to make runs into central channel to receive.

After going through a few rounds/rotations to give players a chance to understand the practice play it as a race against the other practice (ran on the opposite side of the field).

Coaching points

• First touch forward: can we take our first touch forward? Why might this help? Is it better to be close to the half way line? 
• Quality of passing: why will this be really important in our games? 
• Speed: what happens if we are slow on the ball in a game? 
• Cover: if our defending partner gets the ball where is a good place for us to go? (use of orange marker for covering position)
• How are the above linked?

The main issues of playing out from the back comes from being put under pressure as soon as the goal kick is taken. So the real work is going to be done in our opposed practices that give us more realism.

Set up

Using the same field as above, take the starting markers out (start to let players learn good starting positions). Practice is the same as the unopposed practice but with opposition now put in. Start with one defending player and increase the challenge if needed - or when doing this practice we had 3 defenders, 1 could choose which area to press varying the challenge for players.

Defenders start from central channel (retreat line) and look to win ball back and score.

Coaching points

• First touch: Where? What do we have to think about now? 
• Quality of passing: What happens if our passes aren't so good?
• Speed: How long do we have before we are in trouble?
• Cover: does covering our partner help? 

Taking this opposed practice on another step to become more game related.

Set up

Again same field set up as the previous practices. This time working from one goal, with one team playing and one team pressing.  Begin the practice with the central channel being a "safe zone".

We can now look at more game realistic scenarios, presenting the players with problems and decision making situations that they will come across in games.

Of course these points can be covered within an unconditioned game, just remember to put the retreat line into you practice games!

Have any other ideas on how we can develop playing from the back?

Forward Runs To Support (Foundation Ages)

I spent the first weeks of 2016 working on individual ball mastery; encouraging players to be brave in 1v1 situations and build skills required to take on opponents. Now we have started to move onto combination play, using team mates to create chances and retain possession. Working with younger players I feel its vital to build decision making skills, whilst we are looking at combining with others its important not to over emphasis passing! More why, when, where to pass if at all!

Of course decision making isn't stricken to decisions on the ball, a massive part of what makes good players is the decisions they make off the ball. For me a big part of combining with others is to ensure we have good support on the ball, as a team we are quite good at finding space to help team mates but I have recently noticed that a lot of our support is static, most of our passing is to feet - which means we can be quite slow in attack. I wanted to spend a couple of sessions working on runs into space that players can make to play forward a bit quicker to create chances.


Forward Runs To Support

Unopposed/Arrival

I wanted to emphasis breaking into space quickly and started out with an unopposed session to give players plenty of passing opportunities where they were challenged to receive the ball back in a new space.

Set Up: Place a number of squares within playing area, ensure there is good space between them (I made this area too small to begin with and it was difficult for players to find space!). Now fill the squares with "bounce players" the rest of the players need a ball.

Practice: Pass into a bounce player and try to receive the ball out of a different side you passed through.

• Passing quality: whilst we are looking at runs off the ball its important to emphasis good passing into our bounce players - how can this help? what happens in a game if our passes aren't very good?
• Bounce players: where does the runner want the pass? What does a good pass look like? A bad one?
• Receiving: When we get our ball back can we travel with it quickly to the next player - first touch forward. 
• Timing of runs: Is the bounce player ready to pass it? Can we meet the ball instead of waiting for it?

Another unopposed practice we used was making forward runs to finish.

Set up: Working towards a goal place a square (4x4) about 8-10 yards away from the goal. 2 bounce players are placed either side of the square and the rest of the players get a ball each to line up. If you have enough players its worth running a couple of these to maximize the amount of attempts by players.

Practice: Players approach square and play a pass to one of the bounce players who play a through ball out the other side of the square for player to run onto a finish on goal.

Progression: Introduce defender within the square, players can now choose to beat the defender on their own or combine with a bounce player to get around the defender.

• A real big emphasis needs to be on the quality of pass from the bounce players, where do the runners want it.
• Whilst unopposed challenge players to make their runs, passes and finishes as quick as possible. Will we get loads of time in a game?
• Encourage creative play, can we fake a pass to beat the defender on our own? Can we draw defender in and play a quick 1-2 to get through on goal?

Opposed

A practice that included a lot more decision making with when/where to make runs was a circuit practice as shown below.

Set up: 2 small playing areas; one working towards a goal (and goalkeeper) and one working toward an end zone. Each area need a defender. The rest of the players get into pairs and start at on one of the fields.

Practice: Players play a 2v1 in both areas, looking to score or to get the ball into the end zone, create a half way line for defending players to start on if needed. Once players have finished on one of the fields they move to play on the next field. Can progress to include more defenders (1 defender can work between both fields)

• Highlight different types of runs that can be used to support our team mate - overlaps, cross overs etc. 
• When can we make runs? where? Space is needed to run into.
• Encourage practice to be carried out at "game speed" how quick can we score a goal?

Conditioned game

A conditioned game that we have tried..


End zone game: 1 point scored for getting ball into the end zone (player needs to have a touch in end zone to score the point) 3 points if ball is passed to a team mate in the end zone.

A condition we used to prevent players from just waiting in the area was that you couldn't enter area until pass is made - could also use a time limit?


Worked well but I found that it lacked realism, may be more effective to highlight opportnites for supporting runs in your unconditioned game. 

The sessions have been great as a starting platform for the players to understand different ways they can offer support and ways for us to create more scoring chances. These sessions were carried out with a u8 side but could be adapted for other ages as well!

Any other ideas? I'm really keen to pick up some extra info.

Individual Possession (Foundation Ages)

A long time since my last post, been busy with work and trying to spend more time running! Following a 3 week Christmas break I have enjoyed some really good sessions with my u8 side so i thought I would post some of the session content used so far.

Since the England DNA has come to my attention I have decided to try and spend 4-5 sessions working on one of the 9 strands outlined in the DNA. We spent January working primarily on individual ball mastery DNA link: Stay on the ball, master the ball I wanted to increase the players confidence to beat opponents, travel effectively with the ball and retain possession of the ball when under pressure.

The following sessions are a mix of what I have used recently in my sessions and some that I have used in the past. The sessions are aimed out the foundation ages (5-11) where it is vital that we spend time developing players abilities to be comfortable in possession and control the ball.

Individual Possession

Some may associate the term possession with the tiki-taka football played by Barcelona, where they are able to keep the ball away from opponent with slick passing and moving football. For me as a foundation coach its simply keeping the ball, whether this be through dribbling or passing. So many times I see young players panic when in possession - is this due to not knowing what to do with the ball? Do we sometimes encourage passing too much? Maybe its a fear of making a mistake in possession?

I want my players to be confident when on the ball and to be able to keep it when under pressure, when there are little passing options, if we want to create better players we need to start by helping them be comfortable with the ball.

Some arrival activities that can be used to introduce the ideas of shielding the ball from opponent.

A simple and good arrival can be to get the players to take some cones with a partner, make an area and play a 1v1 keep ball game. Swap the pairings around every couple of minutes to vary the challenge and keep it competitive! Another useful idea is to give players a choice of shapes. How might a triangle or circle vary the challenge?

Another is to set up your area where players can spend a few minutes with a ball each doing various moves/turns etc and then progress it to being an opposed practice; simply by taking half the balls out  (so half the group have a ball, half don't) simply challenge players who don't have a ball to get one after 30 seconds players with a ball earn a point and give their ball to a player who doesn't have one (give more opportunities for weaker players to get touches)

With these activities it is important to discuss ideas on how we can keep the ball away from opponent, how do we make it hard for players to take our ball?

• Shielding: using body to protect the ball, moving it as opponent moves. 
• Fakes/turns to try and lose opponents.
• Dribbling into areas away from opponent, trying to keep ball on far side of opponents. 

A nice progression of the 1v1 practice is to include an element of support to a player who is holding possession - whilst we are working on individual possession its still important to touch upon how we can support players who have the ball.

Still a 1v1 practice but the player in possession now has a support player who can maneuver around the area (taking up good support positions). Challenge the player in possession to keep the ball for a set time before using the support player, or perhaps see who can keep it the longest (risk or retain).

You can also make it directional if you want to build a bit more realism into the practice. Set up a series of small fields as shown below. 3 players to a grid (1 defender, 1 server, 1 "shielder" ) Serving player plays into team mate who look to keep possession until support arrives (can have a time limit for supporting player to join, 2 goals if shielding player keeps it for 5 seconds?) Start from opposite side after play in finished, defending player looks to score in opposite goal.

Although there is more of an emphasis on supporting and looking to use the support player; encourage players in possession to be creative in how they solve the problem. Perhaps we can use the support player as a decoy and turn the defender? A 1 touch turn around the defender?


You'll notice that these games are primarily 1v1 based, for me its about maximizing the players time on the ball and trying to create as many opportunities for the players as possible to practice the skills we're working on, especially when working with younger players.

Any other ideas? I'd love to hear them!