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.