Soccer Coach Weekly Practice Plans give you a blueprint for an entire training session – warm-up, training, progression, games and warm-down. If your next training session is fast approaching and you haven’t had time to put together your own plan, Practice Plans could be the answer.
There are now over 350 Practice Plans on the Soccer Coach Weekly website, so there’s bound to be something to suit your needs. And the great thing is that Practice Plans can be adapted by to suit any age group from age 7 to 16, and are also appropriate for adult teams.
To get you started, here’s a selection of my favourite Practice Plans:
Getting your players to pass across the pitch and link up play with good passing moves is critical to playing a possession game. Zigzag through the pitch is a great way to get players moving the ball like they would in a match.
If you want to win games you have to score goals. Finishing off attacks helps you coach your players to take goal-scoring chances when they come along, with great tehnique work and a good amount of repetition.
When it comes to coaching skills, it can be hard to put together a training plan to work on the skill you want to coach. Practice Plans can help you to get it right first time – try The art of turning for example, it’s great for getting players to turn with the ball and head off in another direction.
Games are a great asset to any coaching session. With Practice Plans the games are all set out for you – take a look at Three team triangle games, which encourages players to play with the freedom of the playground. Great fun and well worth trying with your team.
Scoring goals is one of the key aims of football. This technical session works on finishing and movement. It gets players shooting from both sides of the penalty area and from the centre. MORE
Being able to turn with the ball under close control is an important skill in any player’s armoury. “The art of turning” will improve your players’ ability to turn whilst dribbling the ball and turning away from a defender when receiving a pass. MORE
This training session is designed to encourage your players to play with the freedom that they might have in a school playground where they are in control of the environment. MORE
We had a meeting this week at my club, where we were discussing the changes we face in a few months time. My U10s team goes from 7v7 into 9v9 and that means we are facing offside decisions. So how does a coach go about preparing for that? MORE
As coaches we are all obsessed with keeping possession of the ball... of course we are the best teams all do it and if you've got the ball the opposition can't score. And there is just that other coach called Pep Guardiola who swears by it... MORE
Fast is a word I like to use when my teams are attacking. Do it with speed and watch the opposition shrink away from it. It makes life difficult for your opponents and helps your team to dominate when in possession of the ball. MORE
The season has suddenly taken off again after 4 months of Coronavirus lockdown. I've been coaching for 14 hours for the last two weeks in an attempt to get the players back into some kind of shape for playing matches. It has its benefits but also it has a downside. Two of my players picked up injuries, one an ankle injury and the other had what he called "tired legs". Find out how we got on... MORE
Defending against overloads can happen whether your team is in an organised or disorganised state. You can plan defending when organised much easier than when you are defending disorganised. MORE
I was talking to a coach this week about how to control balls in the air, especially when heading the ball in training is off the menu for most clubs. I imagine that there will be much more of a contest to win the ball with a volley once it has dropped from head height. So how do you coach controlling balls in the air? MORE
