Keeping Possession (Foundation Ages)

A long time since my last post, let's just say it's been a bit hectic on the work side! Thought I'd post some of my session content from the past few sessions with my U8 team. The theme of our past 3 sessions has been to keep possession (both as a team and individually) encouraging players to be confident on the ball and building decision making skills - which falls in line with the FA DNA of "love the ball" which sounds pretty cheesy but puts across a strong message; we need to build players ability on the ball, the amount of times I've heard "clear it!" "get rid of it!" at U8 games is ridiculous. These are the years where we need to be building players ability to keep the ball as much as possible. Very rare is "clear it!" the right choice..

Keeping Possession (under 8's) "Try to keep the ball"

For me, keeping possession can be broken down in two parts: individually and as a team, although overall we are looking to keep the ball as team. To be able to this it's important that your players are happy to keep the ball on their own - there won't always be passing options and getting the players to be braver in possession of the ball has made up a big part of last few sessions.

Some session notes on individual possession can be found here.

The arrival games that we have used over the past couple of sessions have linked into our overriding challenge of "try to keep the ball"

Arrival 1: Passing pairs - simply getting the players passing in pairs.

Emphasis on how good passing and control can help us keep the ball, have we kept the ball well if our partner is chasing the ball off the field? Opportunity for players to get plenty of touches at the beginning of the session.

Arrival 2: 2v1 - again very simply group of 3, one starts as defender and other 2 "try and keep the ball" all groups working in half field.

Now going into some details that will help us in our session. Ways we can keep the ball from the defender? Do we have to pass it every time we get it? What if we can't pass it? Close to each other helpful or not (use space to make it easy!)

I let players manage their own 2v1s to begin with, it was basically chaos but that's sometimes OK. Let them be a bit social, mess around etc before building in the content to work on.

Practice 1: 2v1 + 1 - Set up a square (roughly 8x8 depending on age etc.) Play 2v1 in the center area with an extra player who is positioned outside the square and can move around to offer support.

 

• When do we need to pass it? 
• What if we can't make a pass? 
• Support player - how does your movement change?
• First touch - away from defender if we can! 

Practice 2: 2 x 4v2 within half a field, the 4 try to keep possession from the 2 defending players longer than the other side. The round is over when a ball from either side leaves play or the defending team get the ball and score in the goal. The team who managed to keep the ball longer get a point (3 points if their defenders scored), rotate defending players every 2-3 rounds.

The game that we actually used was slightly different to this, but I think this version would work a bit better. It may work as simply playing 4v2s or 3v1s in areas but my group enjoy games with scoring a lot more. 
  

• Positions off the ball - how can we make it difficult for the defending players?
• Keep the ball, do we need to try risky/difficult passes? Is it ok to sometimes keep the ball until a good option is available?
• First touch - into space away from defending player - why?
• Passes - how can our passing help us keep the ball? Quality of pass. 

The key to our sessions around keeping possession has been to to challenge players to think about when they need to pass it, or keep it themselves to help us keep the ball. It's common to see coaches almost forcing players to pass as soon as they are in possession, or to play 2 touch or something similar, which probably leads to losing the ball more. Keeping possession doesn't mean we need to string 8 or 9 passes together all the time.