FA Level 2

The best football players do the simple things in the game the best. Passing and support, should be simple, but how often does it break down because a player can't pass the ball accurately over 5 - 10 yards?

Watch this video of a football coaching practice to understand how to structure and progress  a rotating crossing and finishing game, which will really improve your players crossing and finishing skills.

Running with the ball is an extremely effective attacking skill. Defenders hate it. It commits the defenders to have to do something. It gets the attack quickly up the pitch and into dangerous areas and it takes players out of the game and causes havoc.

A fun and exciting run with the ball, dribbling and ball manipulation game aimed at improving young players ability to dribble with their head up, manipulate the ball and change direction and speed, whilst keeping control of the ball. It's simple to organise and has nice challenges and progressions.

Dribbling is one of the hardest techniques to master. It requires an understanding of when and where to dribble. Players need to be positive and brave, as the easy option is always to pass to a team mate, rather than take a chance. If the dribble goes wrong, too often the player attempting the dribble is blamed for being too greedy or not passing.

Ball control is one of the basic techniques and skills of football. It is important that you coach your players to understand that the technique for ball control is like a dance, there is a logical progression to the key coaching factors. Once you have worked with the players to develop and improve these key logical coaching factors, then when something goes wrong with a players ball control technique, both you the coach and the player can easily identify which part of the technique of ball control has gone wrong and work on improving it.

Counter attacking is a very effective attacking tactic. Once the ball is won, the counter attack has to be quick  to advance down the pitch and attack the opposition, whilst the opposition team still have players going forward and who are then caught out of position and briefly the wrong side of the ball and out of the play.