Midfield and Forward Combinations To Goal

I. Sprint Form With Evan

II. Juggling/Long Balls

III. 6v4 Patterns and Live to Goal

Same exercise as yesterday with one new pattern.  The girls were very poor during this and I got on them during the exercise and demanded that they be sharper.  I understand that the pattern play may not be the most exciting thing against dummy defenders.  But when it comes through in a game, it looks very cool and it works.

As a group, these girls respond to being challenged.  I talked to the girls about demanding the best out of themselves and their teammates.  When things can be better I don't want them to be complacent and say it's ok.  I want them to challenge their teammates to raise their level.  I want them to be fiery and have an intense drive to perform at a high level.

When we switched to the live 6v4, the girls continually improved.  They changed from performing poorly in the beginning to playing some very good soccer.  Players who can fix problems and adapt are the type players we are looking for.

IV. 7v7 Scrimmage

Combination Play and Rainbows Training 5/6

I was not sure if we'd be able to get very much of our training in today as dark clouds continued to creep closer during the 16's 5pm training session.  We were at 6:30 and I had guessed that we might be able to go until 7 before we would get stormed out.  But fortune smiled on us with only a little bit of rain we were able to get through the entire session.

I want to start going back to our combination play and use that while giving the girls some ideas for how we can break down teams that we keep pinned in their end.

I.  Sprint Form Work With Evan

II. Barcelona Double Give & Go's

The girls have seen this on some of the videos that we watch.  It is very hard for the defenders to track the outside mid when she comes into the middle.
We worked on this for at least 30 minutes with a couple of variations including the outside mid playing to the center mid and continues her run to the middle.  The CM plays the forward who lays it off for the outside mid.

III.  Rainbow picture

The ominous clouds that we had seen before and during training had gone by us and created a beautiful double rainbow behind our field.  We stopped to take a picture.  Unfortunately I could only get one of the rainbows in the shot.

IV. 7v7 With Wide Players

Each team provided 2 crossers that could not defend.  You had to play a crosser before going to goal.

V. 7v7 Scrimmage

5v3 Movement To Goal: Training 5/3

I was in Rockford this weekend with the 16's for their last weekend of MRL games.  The 16's have made some major improvements since last year and it looks like they will finish 3rd in the MRL Premier League.    Last year they finished 7th.  The 16's game on Sunday as at 10:00am versus Lexington FC.  After beating them 2-1 we jumped in the car and drove straight back to Holy Angels to drop the players off.  Then Eric and I rushed over to the airport to return the rental van.    

It is a great idea to rent vans when you are going somewhere within driving distance.  It doesn't cost much and you save the wear and tear on your vehicles.  

I made it to McMurray about 15 minutes before the 6pm training session.

I.  Running Juggling

II.  Finishing Repition

The girls were in 2 lines up on top of the 18 and ran into the box 1 at a time while Evan and I served the balls in a variety of ways to them.  We kept harping on the girls to be sharp with the finishes, make solid contact, and shoot low.  I gave them 1 point for a shot on net, 2 points for a goal in the top half of the net, 3 points for a goal in the bottom half. 

III. 5v3 To Goal: Forward and Midfield Movement

Set Up

• 5 Blue Attackers (2 Fwds, 3 Mids)
• 3 Red Defenders (2 Def, 1 Mid)

Procedure

• The Blue CM begins dribbling diagonally towards the forwards
• The Red mid cuts off the passing lane to one of the forwards

• Each attacking player has lots of choices on where to make her run

A) Forward Receiving The Ball

• A¹ Check to and lay the ball off
• A² If the defender is tight, spin off and the ball will be played over the top for a break away

B) Ball Side Outside Mid 

• B¹ Stay where you are to receive the ball at your feet
• B² Curve your run outside and receive the ball at your feet while going forward
• B³ Run hard to the corner and call for the forward to dummy the ball and let it go through to you

C) Forward Who Does Not Receive The Ball

• C¹ Dart inside for a flick on from the other forward or call for the dummy
• C² Pull wide and get ready to run in for the cross.  If you pull really wide the weak side outside mid can run inside and you can make the far run

D) Weak Side Outside Mid

• D¹ Curve your run wide and get in for the cross
• D² Sprint inside for the cross and have the weak side forward take the far post run

 Make It Competitive

• +1 for a good cross
• +1 for a shot on goal
• +3 for a goal
• +5 for a one touch finish
• Defending team +2 for a successful clear

We didn't get through all the runs today because my focus was for the girls to get the set up of the exercise and see how they could be creative on their own.  We struggled a little bit on recognizing when to pass the ball into space and when to play the ball into feet.  It wasn't bad, but incorrect decisions would cost us 1-2 seconds or put us in a less dangerous area had we made the correct choice.  I'm asking the girls to get to the next level with their thinking and it is going to take time.

IV. Scrimmage

Crossing and Finishing: Training 4/28

I didn't have time to do this one in depth.  But we continued on with the crossing and finishing aspect of our training.

0-15 Off Foot Juggling & Driven Balls With 1 Touch Back

15-30 Lay off crossing and finishing technique Teams of 4

30-60 5v3 Forward Movement to Goal

60-90 7v7 

Points:

• +1 for a goal
• +2 for 2 touch
• +3 for a one touch

Forward and Midfield Movement: Training 4/23

After our training on Tuesday I stuck around to watch a little bit of Mark's team train and see if I could pick up any new ideas from the session.  It turned out to be a good night for picking up something new as I watched Mark run one of the best sessions I have seen this year.

Mark had picked it up when he was playing over in France and those coaches had picked it up from Inter Milan.  So this activity has been tested through the ages:)

I. Off Foot Juggling

II. 3v2 Target Play To Goal

Set Up

• 4 teams of 3 players 
• Red team is defending
• Blue, Green and Yellow are attacking
• The two cones closest to the goal act as an offside line

Procedure

• Blue attacker plays the ball to the Blue target forward who checks to the ball at an angle
• 2 Red defenders follow the target and begin defending after the target forward touches the ball

• The Blue target forward lays the ball off one touch to either of the 2 Blue midfielders and continues her movement across the field

• We want the target player to continue her movement across the field to create space for the midfield runners and to keep her speed up.  As she comes across the field, the target should turn and run backwards to keep the goal in front of her.
• The midfielder that does not receive the ball needs to make the run that will create the most space based off of where the target player and defenders are running.  All runs should be curved or diagonal.

• Look to combine to get in to goal 

Make It Competitive

• +1 for a shot on goal
• +3 for a goal
• Defending Team: +2 if you win the ball
• Play for 4 minutes then switch the defending team

Key Points

• The pass into the target and the layoff need to be sharp and crisp or else the exercise will be over due to a poor pass.
• The midfielders need to read where the forward and the defenders are running and make runs that will get them open in dangerous spaces.
• Watch the offside line.  Keep moving horizontally when you hit the line to keep your speed up.
• The entire exercise should take no more than 5-7 seconds to be truly game like.

We started out doing the exercise going 3v1 and moved to 3v2 after 2 rounds.  I found that this exercise didn't look quite as cool when my girls were going through it as the 12's did and I noticed that the difference was when the 12's did the 3v2 the defending team would send one defender high and the 2nd would sit back.  By playing in a straight line they were able to get split a lot and it looked really good offensively.  Our defenders stayed close together and denied the split while often times cutting off one side of the field.  

The good defense allowed us to make adjustments and look to beat the 2 players out wide and cross the ball back in or dribble in.  As we began to find success out wide we talked about making sure the 2 runners into the box kept their depth and made the defenders have to decide who to cover.

This drill also provided me with the perfect chance to begin to show our mids how to make runs past the forwards and allow them to change positions in the attacking 1/3.  Too often our forwards become stagnant in the attacking half and I would like to see them dropping back to receive the ball and clear space for our mids to run onto.  

In order to get this movement I told the mids that they had to criss-cross after the ball was played into the target forward.  I told the girls to really bend their runs on this to create the width and space that the target forward would need to complete a successful pass.  I told the target forward to continue her run diagonally into the midfield after she laid the ball off and become a support player.

It looks confusing in this drawing but on the field it was pretty simple and caused a lot of problems for the defenders because now the 2 midfielders were sprinting forward into the space and the target forward now gave them an outlet in support in case things broke down.

There were now 3 options after the layoff:
A) The midfielder can go directly to goal
B) The midfielder can lay the ball back to the support player and go from there
C) The midfielder can play the ball over the top to the other mid on the far side.

 We had a lot of success with the 3rd option.  It was a great way to work on the Up Back and Through Skillzy.  The key was that the far midfielder had to curve her run wide enough so there would be space to play her the ball and she would be able to receive the ball attacking the goal.

III.  7v7 Scrimmage
We finished with the same type of scrimmage we did at the last session awarding points for getting the ball wide before attacking the goal.  The girls are doing a good job of varying what they are doing in the attack now.  Variety in attack will be our main focus over the next month. 

IV. Keeper Training
After training Evan worked with AJ on keeper training.  6 of the girls stuck around to be shooters.