Scan, receive, turn – Small-sided game
Help your players make quicker and better decisions with this three-part session. By Matthew Thomas MORE
All round passing and receiving
Fine-tune your players’ general passing and receiving and passing. skills with this trio of drills that all take place inside a circle. Increasing the speed of each activity will improve players’ skill level.
What this session is about
- Improving passing and receiving techniques.
- Increasing the speed of ball control and passing.
What to think about
To improve passing and receiving skills, players must:
- Use checking movements to create space.
- Call for the ball.
- Decide what to do before the ball arrives.
- “Cushion” the ball into space when receiving it but keep it within playing distance.
- Side-foot through the ball’s horizontal mid-line when passing and use the correct pace, timing, accuracy and follow-through.
Set-up
| Warm up | Session | Developments | Game Situation | Warm Down |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 minutes | 10 minutes | 20 minutes | 15 minutes | 5 minutes |
What you get your players to do
Use the centre circle on your pitch or mark one out, with a 20-yard diameter.
Six servers stand equal distances apart on the edge of the circle, each with a ball, with six receivers inside.
Receivers control a pass from a server then return it. Receivers then move to take a pass from any other server and repeat the drill. The groups switch roles after a set time.
To progress, receivers take a pass from one server but pass back to a different server, as shown in the top picture.
Each server on the edge has a ball and passes to players inside the circle, who control it and pass it out then move on.
Development
You only need to use six players for this exercise so you may want to make the playing circle smaller.
Use four servers on the edge and an attacker (A) and defender (D) in the middle.
Two of the servers have a ball each. The attacker receives a pass from one server and must pass to a different server who doesn’t have a ball – without being tackled or having the ball intercepted before receiving it or after releasing it.
The attacker then tries to lose the defender and receive either ball from a server and repeat.
Swap attackers, defenders and servers regularly. The player with the most completed passes in a time limit is the winner.
An attacker (A) works against a defender (D) in the circle to lose him, receive a pass from a server and pass back to a different server.
Game situation
Use the centre circle of your pitch and 12 players, split into two teams. Play 3v3 in the middle.
Place six cones an equal distance apart around the circle and place one player from each team at alternate cones so each team has three players around the outside. These players must stay near their cone.
Teams score a point for keeping possession while completing six consecutive passes. Players on the inside of the circle swap roles with the players on the edge after a set time. The team that scores most points wins.
To progress, move to three-touch then two-touch.
A 3v3 takes place in the circle. Each team has three servers outside. The aim is to complete six uninterrupted passes.
