Coaching blog

Drills you can run at your next session, and the grounds the game used to be played in. Written for grassroots coaches, not for badges.

Coaching drills

Every drill animated rather than drawn, so you can see the movement and the timing instead of working it out from arrows on a static diagram. Instructions you would actually give on the grass, and a variation for when the group is bigger or better than you planned for.

All 23 drills →

Animated finishing drill: a player passes in to a team mate and immediately sprints round the back of him, the receiver carries the ball at a cone and lays it off inside first time without looking, and the runner finishes first time across the keeper, shown off both sides

Finishing Drill with Inverted Pass

Session drill · 13 seconds

Animated possession game: 3 v 3 in a grid with a neutral bouncer on each end line, the team in possession passing into a bouncer and getting it straight back, switching end to end, then losing it and the other team using the same two bouncers

3 v 3 with Bouncers

Possession game · 17 seconds

Animated crossing and finishing drill: four lines of attackers around the top of the box and a feeder, the feeder playing out to a flank who dribbles to the line and crosses, with runners attacking the near post, the far post and the space between, and four reps served from alternating flanks

Far Post, Near Post

Session drill · 24 seconds

Historic grounds

Football grounds as they were, photographed from the air between the wars and after, then brought back into colour. Open terracing, cinder banks, and back yards pressed right up against the touchline.

All 31 grounds →

Bank Street

Reconstruction

Anfield

Reconstruction

Highbury

Arsenal · 1936