101 Great Youth Soccer Drills: Skills and Drills for Better Fundamental Play

By Robert Koger

101 Great Youth Soccer Drills is an exhaustive collection of the very best drills available, providing a solid foundation for you to build your players' skills. Filled with simple step-by-step instructions and diagrams, plus a sample practice program, this encyclopedia of drills provides you with solid skill-building fundamentals as well as the advanced techniques you need to get your players in top form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Release date: May 3, 2005
• ISBN: 9780071469500

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101 Great YOUTH SOCCER DRILLS

101 Great YOUTH SOCCER DRILLS

GREAT DRILLS AND SKILLS FOR BETTER FUNDAMENTAL PLAY

ROBERT KOGER

Copyright © 2005 by Robert Koger. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Contents

Foreword: John Ellinger, Head Coach, U.S. Under-17 Men’s National Team

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Beginning a Practice—Warming Up and Stretching

2 Teaching Techniques and Skills

3 General Practice Skills and Technique Drills—U-6/U-8

4 Passing and Kicking Instruction and Drills

5 Trapping and Receiving Instruction and Drills

6 Heading Instruction and Drills

7 Shooting Instruction and Drills

8 Shielding Instruction and Drills

9 Dribbling Instruction and Drills

10 Juggling Instruction and Drills

11 Throw-In Instruction and Drills

12 Volley Instruction and Drills

13 Goalkeeping Instruction and Drills

14 Offensive and Defensive Drills

15 Basic Skills and Individual Technique Drills

16 Game Strategy and Drills

17 Formations and Drills

18 Special Formations and Drills

Appendix: Glossary of Soccer Terms

Index

Foreword

Coaching soccer begins with teaching individual players the basic techniques, or skills, they will need to deal with the ball under all of the various conditions that occur in a game. As we master our techniques through drills during our training sessions, we then move on to teaching our players tactics. We do this by starting with the smallest unit possible—1 player versus 1 player (1 vs. 1)—and gradually working up to the entire team situation—11 players versus 11 players (11 vs. 11). In 101 Great Youth Soccer Drills, it is the players for game situations that the author has focused upon, and that is what makes it such a special coaching manual. There is a need for this type of literature in coaching soccer at the youth level.

Players have to become technically sound in soccer at a young age; once a player learns a technique, it takes countless hours of practice through training drills for this technique to become skill, which is the ability to use the technique to advantage during conditions and restrictions of a game.

As the U.S. Under-17 Men’s National Team head coach, I use training drills every day to improve players’ technical ability and their tactical awareness. Players such as Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley, Bobby Convey, and Freddy Adu have spent many hours on the soccer fields in Bradenton, Florida, mastering technique and becoming better tactically in order to become successful international soccer stars. As a coach I am a big believer in practicing the same drill over and over again until that technique becomes skill and tactical awareness becomes instinct.

To me, teaching the game is the heart and soul of our sport. In all my years involved in coaching this sport, which has included high school, college, youth teams, amateur teams, and professional and national teams, I look back on my teaching time as the most rewarding. In the coaching profession it has always been the desire to create a resource to help the youth soccer coach in developing our young players technically and tactically by following a simple and organized plan. Robert Koger’s drills will bring out the best in our youth players. They are challenging, competitive, and entertaining. The author delivers organized training drills that cover all the essential elements important to improving development in youth soccer players. While the game itself offers many opportunities for a young player to improve, it is still important for the coach to have a book that contains game-related drills, small-sided games, and basic coaching drills.

As a coach you have to plan that next training session. Whether it is preseason or postmatch, you must give some thought to utilizing the right drills that are appropriate to reach the desired result. 101 Great Youth Soccer Drills is an excellent resource for helping the youth coaches find solutions to any problems they may encounter in the game. Bottom line is always the players and how the coach can make them better technically and tactically. Each drill has been diagrammed, showing the correct organization and identifying the objective and proper sequence.

All of us involved in this wonderful sport of soccer can enjoy watching a game at the highest level and having an appreciation for how the ball is played, the connection of a team through intricate passing, and the pure passion when a goal is scored, but there is always a beginning to this final product, and that is the countless hours spent on a field practicing as a young player with a coach running organized training drills with the objective of getting to the next level of play.

—John Ellinger, Head Coach

U.S. Under-17 Men’s

National Team

Preface

A few years ago I was teaching a beginners coaching clinic. As I looked out at the group, I saw a man I knew had been coaching at least 10 years. I finished the clinic and walked over to the coach and asked him why he was there. He stated that his team was not winning and that now he knew why. He said that he had gotten away from the basics. This book prepares the beginning coach, assists and refreshes experienced coaches, and provides all the basic drills for coaching.

101 Great Youth Soccer Drills is the only how-to book you will ever need on soccer drills. With this book you can go from a beginner to an advanced coach. It is laid out in a sequence that allows any coach to become a master at teaching soccer. For those coaches who are new, it steps sequentially through the skills and the drills. For experienced coaches, each section is formatted to enable you to quickly find the information you need to conduct productive training. All information is easy to understand and is written to be used in a separate and stand-alone sequence. This allows you to teach what you need, when you need it.

This book completely covers the needed drills to prepare your players. It will become ragged with use. It is specifically designed to be used from the beginning of your journey as a coach to becoming the expert. No matter how experienced or inexperienced you are, you will not leave this book on the shelf once you have scanned the comprehensive contents and seen the easy-to-use format. This book is organized from the simple to the complex, using a building-block sequence. This allows you,the coach, to design your personalized training program by using drills to teach your players the game of soccer.

The information here is a result of more than 25 years of coaching youth soccer. Many of the drills and exercises are not original but have been picked up over the years and found to be the most effective in developing skills. There are many soccer books on the market, but very few take into consideration that you, the coach, do not have access to a wide array of equipment for training. Nor do you have an excessive amount of time. One book I read said to use a 50-foot-long wall, three feet high, and in another section it talked about the sandpit for goal-keeper training. These are not normally on the fields used to teach youth soccer. All of the equipment and field areas used for the drills in this book are easily available.

Coaching soccer can be fun. If you know what to do and your team is performing well, it is a lot of fun. If you don’t know what you are doing and your team looks like an undertrained kickball team, fun is not a word you would use. This book provides the information that you need