Soccer Drills - Pre-Season
Are you ready for the season?
Nothing sets the tone for a successful better than a well-planned pre-season. The focus is not only on developing the physical fitness of your players, but also their technical and most of all tactical skills. Here is where you install your strategies for the upcoming games. So as you can tell there is a lot to do, a lot to plan. If you want more info on how to structure your season, you can read our coaching blog here.
If you are looking for the right drills to spice up your pre-season, we at planet.training go you covered! We have thousands of soccer drills for any skill! You can directly start coaching with these four exercises or try hundreds of Premium Exercises and public drills in our soccer database.
Season break plan
We have put together a simple training program for all healthy players which can be done by themselves. We suggest to practice the exercises in this plan at least two times a week, while strengthening the upper body (abdominals, back muscles, arms, shoulders) on the remaining days. Some suggestions for simple but effective upper body exercises include: planks, crunches and push ups.
If you’d like to get more information about our season break plan check out our new blog article.
Warm Up Game - Tic Tac Toe
Set Up:
Set up 3 x 3 fields – use cones or big hoops. Set up two starting stations approx. 10m in front of field. Build two teams of 1-4 players per set up – Each team lines up at one of the stations. Provide 3 matching colored markers – (bib, cones, balls, etc.)
Execution:
This exercise follows almost the same rules as the classic Tic Tac Toe: To win the game a team must place their 3 markers in a row – Diagonal, horizontal or vertical.
On the Coach’s signal the first player of each team starts running towards the field and places his first marker in one of the 9 areas. After marking the first area the player runs back to tab the next waiting player, which then starts running towards the field – Same execution for third player. After all 3 markers have been placed in the field, one marker at a time can now be replaced by each following player, until one team wins – 3 markers in a row.
Play several rounds as a competition – Best of 5 or 7
Passing Circle - Majority Game as Warm-Up
Set Up:
Set up a cone circle with a diameter of 12-15m. 5-8 Offensive players line up around and outside of the circle. 2-3 Defensive players are inside the circle. 1 Ball is enough.
Execution:
The first player of the offensive team starts the exercise with an opening pass - The first pass is not challenged by the defenders. Offensive players try to hold the ball away from the defenders through a high number of fast passes - Defenders have to stay for one more round after 10 successful passes. A maximum of 2 ball touches.
If Defender intercepts or breaks up a pass, he will switch position with the attacking player, who caused the incomplete pass.
4 (+4) vs 4 on several goals
Set Up:
Divide the group into three teams of 4 (you can vary the amount of players in a team). Place 5 cone/pole goals with a width of 3m, on the pitch (30m x 30m). Adjust the size of the field and goals to the amount of players.
Execution:
Two teams (red and orange) play as one versus the third team. The 4+4 team is the ball controlling team and tries to create spacing, through fast passing and good positional play. Goals can be scored, when succesfully passing and receiving the ball through cone/pole goals. The third team of four tries to keep the two attacking teams from scoring, with maintaining a good positional play.
Playing time: 6 games of 2 minutes – Each team of 4 will be playing defense twice.
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Register nowWithout passing and dribbling there is no scoring
Scoring and winning is the ultimate goal of any football game. Whether a volley shot, bicycle kick, header or instep drive. Any technique can be improved by practicing it during your soccer training sessions. However, without an effective passing game or a perfect dribbling, there would not even be a chance to score. Therefore, coaches should always combine several skills in their session plans. Shots on the goal are perfect for engaging in small-field games or passing drills. To make sure that your next session plan is created even faster, there are a lot of other drill examples and variations on our other exercise pages.
