Finishing Session - Thursday, April 5

6:00PM - 6:30PM Ball Masters - Individual Skills Development

With spring break vacations in full swing, we had a dozen girls show up last night at Bielenberg for training.

I. Synchronized Ball Dancing

Set Up

• Ball per player, each player working with a partner

Procedure

• The partners are given a series of ball moves to work on together, attempting to execute the moves in as synchronized a fashion as possible

Make It Competitive

• Give the partners the sequence, have them work on it for a few minutes, then bring the team in to watch each pair work and rank them 1 to 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best

Comments

In a continuing effort to find new ways to keep the girls interested in working on important individual ball skills, I came up with this idea.  I would give a technical sequence like this:

1. Forward touch with the inside of your right foot
2. Left foot Step Over
3. Right foot Cut Behind

The idea was to have the girls work on their ball familiarity in a fun and competitive setting by trying to have them work with their partner to master the sequence, then challenge the pair to execute the moves as a unit at speed. 

This was a lot of fun for the girls.  We did this 3 or 4 times using different technical sequences, then I had the pairs try and make up their own 3-move routine to show off in front of the group.

6:30PM - 7:30PM Field Training

II. Sequence Passing

Continuing on with our "improve our passing" theme since returning from Virginia, a ran the girls though our Sequence Passing routine while I set up the field for the finishing work to follow.

Set Up

• 35x40 yard area
• Two teams of 6, gold and blue, and players on each team are assigned numbers 1 - 6

Procedure

• Two soccer ball, one with the #1 players on each team
• At the coach's signal, #1 passes to #2, #2 then passes to #3, and so on
• All players must be moving at all times

Make It Competitive

• +1 point for each team if they make a mistake (you don't want points)
• Mistakes could be errant passes outside of the grid or to incorrect teammates, more touches than is allowed, not receiving the ball in a proper position, etc.

Coaching Points

• Short passes - no more than 10 to 15 yards
• Short passes should still be crisp and game like
• Keep the ball on the group, strike the middle of the ball using proper passing technique
• See your intended target before you receive the ball - meaning, take a look prior to having a ball passed to you in order to see where your next pass will be going
• Adjust your body to receive a pass facing the teammate you are going to play to next - sometimes this means moving your feet quickly in order to best position your body

Progression

• Unlimited touches by all players to start
• Two touch by all players
• Two soccer balls for each team - one starts with #1 and one starts with #4 on each team

Reverse It! Variation

• On the coach's "Reverse It!" shout, players reverse the order of their passing - #4 now passes to #3, #3 to #2, etc.

III. Pattern Play Shooting With Limited Pressure

The idea here was to get the girls into a shooting rotation that would involve finishing for sure, but also keep the non-shooting girls involved and active as well as demand that the girls focus on a number of different technical aspects of the game.

Set Up

• With 12 players, players set up as in the illustration below.  Note that I used blue and gold colors to help identify starting positions and the initial direction that players in these positions go.  There is no need for two teams in this exercise.
• One player in each of the following positions (labeled in green) - GK, Passer, Target, Defender, Attacker.  Same set up for another 5 players using the opposite side of the field, with all additional players waiting in the passing line. 
• The pink cone marking Defender D's starting position is 3 yards behind Attacker A's starting cone
• All the soccer balls split between the two passing lines

Procedure

• (1) Passer P passes to Target T then follows their pass to become the next T.  Note both blue and gold P start at the same time so that there are two passing patterns going up both sides of the field (in opposite directions) at the same time
• (2) Target T passed to Attacker A then takes D's position
• (3) Attacker A goes to goal then becomes the GK in the goal they just shot at
• (4) Once Attacker A touches the ball, Defender D is live and tries to stop A then returns to A's starting position to become the next A
• After a shot is taken on them, GKs retrieve the ball and wait in line at the passing cone by their goal in order to work they sequence up the other side of the field
• As soon as a shot is taken, the next player in line at the initial passing cone starts the next sequence

Make It Competitive

• +1 point for a goal
• +3 points for a far post goal (encouraging far post shots from angles)
• +1 point for a save as a GK

As I mentioned, though this is a fun finishing exercise for the girls, I wanted them to focus on a number of technical issues in the pattern play build up as well as on the finishing end of things.  I would let the girls run through the exercise a few minutes, stop and bring up a point, let them run through it some more, stop and bring up another point, and so on.  By the end of the 30 minutes, I had covered the following. 

Coaching Points

• Good, firm pass from P to T
• T, knowing the direction of where they wanted to play, needed to receive the ball across their body with a tight touch (close to their feet).  I wanted the target players to think about playing in a crowded midfield with not much room for larger control touches away from their feet.  I also wanted this player to play 2-touch (control then pass) as quickly as possible.  For blue in the illustration above, that would mean inside of the left foot control and a quick right foot pass.
• I wanted T to pass to A feet (as opposed to passing to space), and to focus on passing to A's lead foot, the foot closest to the direction A wanted to go (to goal) and furthest from Defender D.  In the illustration above, that would me blue T would pass to blue A's right foot.
• Positive first touch by Attacker A to goal

Two Touch Variation

Same as above with the restriction that Attacker A only has two touches.  Target T must still pass to Attacker A's feet, but now Attacker A is working on shots from distance at angles rather than also having the option to dribbling in 1v1 with the GK.

Pass to Space Variation

Same set up and sequence as the exercise above, only this time Target T plays Attacker A in to goal with a lead pass to space.

Coaching Points

• I wanted Attacker A to simulate holding their run to stay onsides, so I implemented the rule that the Defender D  could not move until A left their cone.  In this way, if A started "cheating forward" in anticipation of a pass, D could recover goal side even before the pass was made by T.  Also, this cheating forward could also lead to A drifting into an offsides position. 
• Attacker A even though not moving forward, should get their body down low and ready to explode to the ball when it is played in front of them
• Attacker A needs to communicate verbally ("Through!") and visually (with their hand out and extended showing Target T where they want the ball played

IV. 4v4 Small Sided with Neutral Team

Set Up

• 30x40 yard playing area with a goal set up at each end
• 3 teams of 4 players, each team in a different vest color

Procedure

• Two teams take the field to play 4v4
• The team that is not on the field provide a GK for each team as well as a side player on each sideline
• Wide players are neutral players and are limited to 3-touch or less
• Which ever team scores stays on the field.  The team that was scored on changes places with the neutral team

FIT Training - Sunday, April 1

11:00AM - 12:30PM @ FIT Sudios (Minneapolis)

This was the fourth out of 6 Crash Training sessions the team is taking this spring at the FIT Training Studios. The first three were held at the St Paul studio, the next three will be held at the Minneapolis location.

I have not had a chance to see the St Paul studio as I was coaching the East Academy teams on Sunday afternoons when the U13s were taking the training. With our Sunday Academy Futsal Training now complete, I got the chance to head over to the Minneapolis studio this morning with the team.

Our session started at 11AM, but the FIT trainers have have gone out of their way to make themselves available for 1-on-1 personal attention to any of the girls who want to take them up on the offer. When I got to the studio at 10:30AM, Scratch was already hard at work with Danielle working on stability and running technique. Lily was also there early to work on ankle strengthening exercises.

We had 12 girls attend, and the FIT trainers worked the team hard. The Minneapolis studio has a turf area that also allowed the girls to get some touches in. It's a great setting for the girls to work in and I think they had a good time.

From Danielle Pellicano, FIT Training

Today’s session began with a dynamic warm-up and stretch. I tailored most of the exercises around running form, emphasizing the importance of arm movement and body tilt. I explained to the girls that the quicker they pump their arms the quicker their legs will react in a sprint motion. Leaning into the run also helps with body mechanics. This will only come with time much like most muscle memory activities we are having them perform. The girls appeared very fresh from the start and seem to be absorbing the running tips from the week prior. I feel in time this will only contribute to our goal of ‘functional speed’ on the field.

Having said that, I divided our session into two parts: One, focusing primarily on strength and balance, while the other focusing on speed and performance.

FIT trainer, Adam Meier, lead the strength portion of our session. He had the girls perform various exercises on the bosu ball while incorporating resistance training at the same time. The bosu ball forces an athlete to find core balance while performing additional activities. We encourage our players to train in an unbalanced environment to help develop their coordination which in time turns into strength. This will help prevent injuries in the future.

I had the girls doing incline sprints on the treadmill for duration of 2-4min. Their goal was to run to fatigue and then perform various agility activities on the turf with little to no recovery, most of the drills revolved around foot work with the soccer ball. This is a great way to judge a players ‘game fitness.’ The reason I gave the girls little recovery was to show them how it would feel to perform on the field with 3 minutes left in a game. This highlights not on a player’s physical capability but more importantly one’s mental toughness. The girls struggled at first but for their first time at FIT this is to be expected. We hold a high expectation for our athletes and encourage them to perform at a tough level. This type of training although difficult is extremely important in the game of soccer and will only prove so to a player come game time.

I ended the season with a team cool down which always involves ‘core’ work and laughter. Adam and I enjoy working with the Bangu girl’s and feel they are progressing wonderfully but more importantly they appear to be enjoying themselves while doing so. Till next week.

Cheers!

Danielle

Training - Saturday, March 31

8:15AM - 8:45AM FIT Training

8:45AM - 9:15AM Video Analysis

9:15AM - 10:45AM Field Training

It was clearly evident at the Jefferson Cup event that our girls were uncomfortable with the ball under pressure.  My plan is to spend a lot of the spring time in 1v1 situations to try and build the girls' confidence in their individual technical ability with the ball at their feet. 

It's spring break week so we have a number of girls out of town.  We had 12 today which actually worked out perfectly for what I wanted to do.

I. 1v1 Battles - Head On

Set Up

• 4 teams of 3 girls per team, blue, green, red, and gold
• Two 20x12 yard fields with Pugg goals set up on opposite ends of each field

Procedure

• Decide which team starts off as the defending team
• First player in the defending line passes a ball out to the first player in the attacking line and then goes to play defense
• Attacker tries to score goals
• If the defender wins the ball, the defender can look to attack the attacker's goal
• Make it, take it - teams alternate playing defense and offense each turn, EXCEPT if the attacking team scores a goal.  Then, the attacking team gets a ball played out to them again.

Make It Competitive

• +1 point for the attacking team for a goal
• +2 points for the defending team if the defender wins the ball from the attacker and can score a goal

Coaching Points

• Attack the defender with your first touch
• Quick set up touches (close control) as you approach the defender
• Explosive moves to get by defenders, composure on the finishes

II. 1v1 Battles - From Angles

Set Up

• Same as above, with the addition of two pink starting cones as shown below
• Soccer balls with the player at the pink cones, another player at the attacking cone, the third player waiting in between the cones (as this third player could need to be at either cone depending on what happens on the field)

Procedure

• Same as 1v1 Head On, with the only difference being that the defenders are now closing from angles

Make It Competitive

• Same as 1v1 Head On

Coaching Points

• First touch towards middle of the field to leave more options for attack
• If possible, try and use the defenders momentum and sideways movement against them by taking touches in the opposite direction across the defender - in the illustration above, that would mean that the blue attacker would try and use the green defenders movement towards the defender's right against the defender, looking to take the ball across the defender to the defender's left

III. 1v1 Battles - Back to Goal

Set Up

• Same as 1v1 Head On, but this time both teams are on one end line on opposite sides of the goal

Procedure

• Green attacks first
• First player in blue's line (defender) is sitting on the ground, hands up, feet up (both hands and both feet off the ground)
• The second player in green's line has a ball and passes it out for the first green attacker to sprint to - ball must be played into the opposite half of the field
• Blue defender can get up and sprint to defend as soon as the ball is played out
• Attackers always attack the goal they came from, defenders who win possession always attack the far goal - remember, teams could score on either goal depending on if they are the attacking team or the defending team
• Play make it, take it

Coaching Points

• Attackers need to get to the ball quickly in order to be able to turn and face the defender if possible before they pressure you too much
• Attacker don't need to track the ball (watch the ball) the entire time - get a feel for the speed and direction of the ball then sneak peeks behind you to check where the defender is

IV. 9v9 Scrimmage with White team

Training - Tuesday, March 27

6:00PM - 6:30PM Ball Masters - Individual Skills Development

I. Short Passing Warm Up

Now that baseball has started up at the Academy of Holy Angels, we are not allowed into the dome until our allotted start time of 6:30PM.  I didn't know this and wasn't able to prep the girls prior to tonight.  Luckily the weather outside was decent, so we spent the first 25 minutes on the grass area just outside of the dome.  I would later get an email informing BTFC teams that we cannot use this grass area yet, but I didn't know about this tonight.

We struggled this past weekend with our passing.  Big time.  I wanted to take a step back and refocus on simple passing technique.  I did this simple exercise as a warm up.

Players worked in pairs with one soccer ball per pair.  They stood about 10 yards apart and worked on different passing techniques back and forth.  Lots of repetition which was needed.

• Inside of the foot - strong and weak foot
• Outside of the foot stab pass
• Clip pass (player would face sideways and "clip" the ball across their body to their teammate)

6:30PM - 7:45PM Field Training

II. Sequence Passing

Set Up

• 44x40 yard area
• Two teams of 7, gold and blue, and players on each team are assigned numbers 1 - 7

Procedure

• Two soccer ball, one with the #1 players on each team
• At the coach's signal, #1 passes to #2, #2 then passes to #3, and so on
• All players must be moving at all times

Make It Competitive

• +1 point for each team if they make a mistake (you don't want points)
• Mistakes could be errant passes outside of the grid or to incorrect teammates, more touches than is allowed, not receiving the ball in a proper position, etc.

Coaching Points

• Short passes - no more than 15 yards
• Keep the ball on the group, strike the middle of the ball using proper passing technique
• See your target before you get the ball - meaning, take a look prior to having a ball passed to you in order to see where your next pass will be going
• Adjust your body to receive a pass facing the teammate you are going to play to next - sometimes this means moving your feet quickly in order to best position your body

Progression

• Unlimited touches by all players to start
• Two touch by all players
• Two soccer balls for each team - one starts with #1 and one starts with #4 on each team
• 2 to 1 - a player takes two touches, the next player takes one, the next players takes two, etc.
• One touch by all players

When the girls started this drill, gold was on one side of the field and blue was on the other.  I challenged the girls to have their teams play through each other, thus forcing them to get into good positions, find their target players in traffic, and all around be more aware of their surroundings. 

The girls also hit many long balls to teammates early on and, like I have them do in our pre game warm ups, made long runs to get the ball.  I wanted to focus on short passing, so I put in the restriction of passes no longer than 15 yards and encouraged them to move quickly to get into space prior to receiving a pass so that the pass could be played into their feet.

III. Four Corner In and Out

Set Up

• 50x65 yd grid with 4 x 10 yd Target Areas, one in each corner of the grid
• Two teams of seven players, gold and blue
• All the soccer balls at the coach's feet at the top of the grid

Procedure

• Coach plays a ball into the mix
• Teams play possession, scoring points for a set number of completed passes
• Teams score bonus points for passing a ball to a teammate in a Target Area and if that teammate can then play another pass to a different teammate (not the same teammate who played the pass into the Target Area)

Make It Competitive

• +1 point for every 5 consecutive passes
• +5 points for a pass into a Target Area followed by a successful return pass to a different teammate

Coaching Points

• Get support around the ball and keep the ball moving
• Don't force low percentage passes
• Read when the time is right to place a long pass to break pressure or spring a teammate, and when the time is right to slow down the pace of play
• 3-man combination play - third attacker needs to read when a ball is played into a Target Area and where the best position is to give support

IV. 7v7 Small Sided Scrimmage

Training - Tuesday, March 20

7:15PM - 9:00PM Field Training

Our final training session prior to heading to Virginia this weekend.  Like usual, I tried to pack WAY too much stuff into a final session before heading out of town.  It didn't help that I had not read the master dome schedule correctly, so instead of having 1/2 the dome to ourselves we had to split the time with our U13 Green team.  It also didn't help that I didn't find this out until just a few minutes before we took the field.  My fault.  Umut (the Green team coach) was gracious enough to be accommodating, knowing that we had the tournament this weekend.  So we ended up with about 35 yards at one end of the dome. 

I got to the dome around 6:30PM to do some work with Blondie.  I make myself available to do work with interested girls one on one prior to any of our training sessions, and a number of girls have taken advantage of this opportunity.  The girls starting arriving around 7PM for the 7:15PM session.  We usually do some individual skills work for the first half hour, but today I wanted to sit and talk with the girls about the coming weekend. 

I passed out a handout about our attacking free kicks and we discussed it as a group.  I then talked to the girls about their Individual Goals for the weekend.  I came up with three or four goals for each player that I wanted them to try and reach this weekend.  Most goals had to do with technical or tactical challenges, some dealt with team bonding issues.  For example, I wanted Macky to try and get a header on goal from a set piece, Soph to not get beat on a fast break 1v1, Millie to play a double give and go with a teammate, etc.  As for the team bonding issues, I wanted Grace to not sit by Brownie (her best friend) at our Saturday team meal, Ripper to invite a new girl to hang out at the hotel, etc.  This is the first time that I'm trying these Individual Goals, but I think that it could be a good idea. 

When we took the field I spent the first 20 minutes on some functional positional training.  The forwards and mids worked on attackers rolling defenders in the box, and the defenders worked together on jockeying and delaying attackers on fast break 1v1s. 

For the remainder of training, we worked on defending corner kicks and setting up defensive walls around our box. 

The girls worked hard during the session, but I think I gave them too much info in too little of a time.  At least the core group of the girls who have been with me for a while have a decent idea about what is going on, but some of the new girls to the team I'm sure felt a little swamped with all the info. 

At the end of practice, I noticed Scratch was bummed out.  I asked her what was wrong as we were leaving and she said she was fine.  I got caught talking to someone for a few minutes at the dome exit, and as I was getting ready to go, I overheard Scratch telling Macky that they should both come and talk to me.  I encouraged them to tell me what was on their minds and all three of us walked a little bit apart from the others. 

Both girls felt that I was getting on them too much about not paying attention in training when I seemed to let other girls get away without reprimand for similar misbehavior.  They both said other girls on the team felt the same way (that I got on Macky and Scratch more than others).  Both girls were pretty upset, though I do feel the two of them deserve it when I do get on them for distracting behavior during training.  I talked to them about what I was seeing from them at training and listened to their issues.  They agreed to try and be more considerate when I was leading training and I told them that I would try to be more aware of "picking" on them only.