Arsenal Dev Center - u7 Turning

Another session carried out at the Arsenal Development Center with the impressive u7 group. This weeks session was on turning and whilst I did think about incorporating receiving turns into the session I decided to keep it as individual turns - to continue to work on ball mastery as our over-riding topic.


What? Turning; we will look at a number of turns during the session. Giving players the opportunity to practice unopposed then in a 1v1 situation.

How? By focusing the early part of our session working individually with a ball, and then moving into a situation 1v1.

Why? To look into how/why we might use turns.

Warm Up/Arrival 

Bases: Set out a number of bases within practice area. 3/4 players start as "taggers" the others are the "runners" runners get a point if they go from one base to another without being tagged. If tagged they must hop to nearest base to start using both legs again.

Adaptations: 2 points for going to different colour e.g. orange - blue.
                     Tagged players must freeze for 5 seconds.
                     Time limit in bases.

Ball Mastery: Moved onto a ball each working on some of the moves we have already covered.And then began to introduce or turns one at a time (inside cut, outside cut, Cruyff turn, step over cut)
Next challenged the players to perform turns in each base, turning through the side they entered. 


1v1 Game

Set up: A serving cone and receiving cone are set up between two goals. The receiving player faces the serving player, the server rolls the ball in and overlaps to become the defender. The attacker must dribble through one of the coned goals to score.

Server players to attacker and overlaps to become defender

Attacker can go either side to beat defender

 Encourage creative ways attackers can be defenders

Challenges:

• Try to change direction to trick opponent, how can we do this? Turns, moves, fakes?
• Try to protect the ball from defender. How? 
• Be fast when space opens up for goals. How? Why?

Questions??

• How do we protect the ball? Why?
• How can we beat the defender?
• Do we need to be speedy when we can get to a goal?

Following this we moved onto an unconditioned game. The players had worked quite a lot on turns so didn't want to put restricting conditions on.

Was able to set challenges to individuals during the game.

Overall a good session, although it was difficult to manage 6 1v1s at times!!