Finishing, Forward and Midfield Movement: Training 4/30

Today's training was thrown a bit out of whack when Eric called me to say that he had an emergency at work and was not going to be able to attend the 16's training.  Originally he was just going to let the girls run it, but I said that we were doing a lot of finishing and different activities that are fun and I could have the 13's demonstrate the activity and the 16's could go and run it on their own.

It turned out I overestimated the 16's focus level and maturity.  Their was no leadership and they were perfectly happy to do everything at half speed and sloppily.  After 35 minutes I told them to go do whatever they wanted because it was a waste of time to explain the exercises to both groups and try to watch them since they were not putting in any effort.  

If the 13's ever show this type of attitude there will be major consequences and changes to who is on the team.

Here is what we did:

I. Off Foot Juggling & Driving The Ball With 1 Touch Back

All but 4 players can get to the 30 juggles with their opposite foot now and the 4 are really close to getting to 30.  The one touch back went better than expected last time.  

II. Finishing Technical Work

Lots of repetition.  We had 2 players serving balls from their hands on each side.  Every couple of minutes we switched up the type of ball being played in.  We concentrated on quick, sharp swings.  Finishing low.  And Headers.

• Line drives from throw
• Bouncing balls from throws
• Lofted balls from throws

III. Crossing and Finishing
Same set up we used on Tuesday to see if the technical work helped us out on our finishes. 

IV. Scrimmage vs the U16's
Some of the 16's had mentioned before training that they'd like to scrimmage the 13's.  I had said no before because there was a lot of things I wanted to work on and we were not going to have time.  But the 13's really wanted to play and they had been pretty focussed during training so for the last 40 minutes we scrimmaged.

The small training field at McMurray (100x55) would play to our advantage because the 16's wouldn't be able to out run us.  We played really well and created a handful of really good scoring chances.  As usual the girls battled extremely hard and didn't back down from the challenge.  The 16's hit the post but besides that the work rate of the 13's kept the ball away from our 18.  There was a controversial offside call by the 16's that pulled a goal back that the 13's had scored.  The game ended 0-0 and I left amazed at how the girls absolutely never back down.