Tips For 4v4 Coaches

These are some skills to help with throughout the season:

Skills to improve:

Passing: Inside of the foot, while moving
Shooting: In-step, while moving
Dribbling: Speed and keeping it close
Trapping: Settling bouncing balls (not too bouncy)

Skills to develop:

Throw-ins:

Both feet out of bounds and always on the ground
Release ball with both hands

Holding positions / Spreading out
Defense: staying goal side
Goal kicks and corner kicks

For practices, I did many of the same drills each week (keeping the same basic format) and would add/change drills based on an above skill that needed extra work. I would start the practice with individual skills, then did more game related skills, and ended with a short scrimmage (hopefully seeing the practiced skills). Below is my basic practice outline that I would pick and choose from (click here for more detail on these and other drills [Word Document]):

Sample (1 Hour) Practice

Individual Skills (20 Mins):

Touch top of ball (Do not put any weight on the ball, quickly switch feet)
Roll ball forward and backward (Use one foot and then the other)
Bells (The player stands over the ball and gently "passes" the ball from one foot to the other in quick succession. The player must shift from one foot to the other to do this, which usually makes the lower body look like a bell.)
Snake Dribbling (Divide players into groups of three or four. Have them stand in line, forming a "snake." The middle player starts with the ball. The middle player (Player B) must try to follow the first person, or "head" of the snake (Player A) while dribbling. The third player (Player C) follows the second player and so on. From front-to-back, the players should be arranged as follows: Player A (head of snake), Player B (Dribbles ball), Player C (follows dribbler). On command, the middle player becomes the new head of the snake, while the old head of the snake goes to the end of the line and player C now has ball in middle.)
Stretch-out (also an opportunity to talk about what you are going to learn do today)
Passing through cones (straight line with partner)

Inside of foot
Instep
Outside of foot (may be too advanced)

Circular Passing (Once your group is circled up give one player a ball. This player must pass it to another member of the circle and then follow their pass taking the “receivers” place. The “receiver” then passes the ball to another member of the circle and follows his/her pass taking the place of that “receiver.” When the team gets comfortable with using one ball, throw in a second. Now the concentration level must increase and your athletes must avoid each other as they run through the circle as well as avoiding balls. Make sure that your athletes are calling out the names of the teammates that they are passing to.)
Throw-ins (mentioned above)

Match-Related Skills (20 Mins):

Gates (Two players per gate. The gates are approximately two steps apart. One ball per group. First player must play the ball on the ground through the gate to second player. Second player must receive and play back through the gate within two touches. The game continues until players cannot get the ball back through the gate on the ground within two touches.)
U-8 Passing (Place about 10 cone goals randomly on the field. The goals are about 3 feet wide or so. Players partner up and pass through the cone goals. The rules being that they are not allowed to pass through the same goal twice in a row. We practice this a few times and then add the pressure of completing a certain number of passes in some sort of time frame.)
Team Dribbling (A regular even sided scrimmage. However, since the object of the game is to encourage and increase the amount of dribbling going on, six, small 'cone goals' have been set up around the field. Each time a player dribbles through one of the goals, it counts as a point. May want to make teams uneven like 2v4 and discuss spreading defense and not bunching)
Goal kicks (teach wings to stay wide and the kicker to pass to space, not up the middle of the field)
Corner kicks (defense: put a person on the near post and another in front of the middle of the goal out about 5 feet, others mark a person. Offense: get close to the goal, kicker should aim for the front of the goal)

Scrimmage (20 Mins):

Stress the use of the skills you just practiced
Feel free to freeze the play, rewind it, make a point (ask where a better pass could be or what a better choice may have been), practice the suggestion, and then restart the game.

Helpful Web Sites: