22 Apr 2014

Football Coaching on improving players passing and running forward

We hear a lot about possession play. Brendan Rogers at Liverpool has developed and evolved a very successful playing style based upon possession based football – although it does help that you have Suarez in your team at the sharp end of all the possession based play!!

Today’s football coaching question is about how a coach can get their team not just to play possession for possessions sake, but how at some point the players have to pass for a positive purpose.

Question: We just seem to pass the ball square or backwards. How can I put on a simple coaching session that encourages players to run forward to receive passes?

Answer: Watch the video of “Forward runs for forward passing”. Besides being coached, players also need to be encouraged to practice on their own, to develop their own learning. This is a player skill challenge that the coach can facilitate but leave up to the players to put into practice that encourages pairs of players to work and co – operate together to develop timed forward runs for accurate forward passes.