Dribbling Soccer Drills: Dribbling Session Plan

Session Topic: Dribbling

Length: 1.5 Hours

Main Focus: Quality, Pace, Change of Direction

 

Below I have outlined a whole session that explores the topic of dribbling. The drills can be used for most age groups with a little bit of adapting to suit your needs and the needs of your individual players.

The drills in this session primarily focus on; the quality of the dribbling, changing pace when appropriate and changing of direction when need.

Qualities of a great dribbler…

• Balance
• Awareness
• Close Control
• Creativity
• Confidence
• Agility

(Feel free to ask players what they thing the qualities of a great dribbler are. Use the above as reference)

Common Problems;

• Trying to beat the same opponent multiple times
• Dribbling with the ball too far away
• Head down when dribbling

 

 

Warm Up

As dribbling mainly consists of close ball control, agility, speed and a general sense of quickness with the ball, one of the best ways to warm up your players up for this session is to combine several elements of SAQ training and Ball Mastery training from Coerver Coaching into your warm up.

Quick Tips:

• If you have a large number of players – use a circuit type warm up drill
• Keep everything moving smoothly
• Explain each part of your circuit before having your players go through everything

Key Coaching Points:

• Keep ball close
• Be Quick BUT focus on technique

 

Here are two separate videos; one SAQ and one Coerver Ball Mastery. Use the techniques, drills and exercises in each of the videos and combine them together to come up with your very own new warm up drill.

 

 

Main Session Part 1:

Soccer Dribbling Drill Feinting, Receiving and Combinations

This drill is great to get your main coaching points instilled early on in the session.

Adaptions: For younger players you might want to leave out the change of direction and instead get them to change direction by coming backwards – then use the original as a progression.

Key Coaching Points:

• First touch when receiving the ball is important – where are you going to place the ball?
• Keep a low centre of Gravity
• Keep head up where possible
• Lots of small touches
• If travelling at speed use the outside of the feet
• Use arms for balance
• Look to change direction using feints and tricks

 

Progressions:

• Change the turns
• Increase the pace and speed of play
• Use different feet for turns

 

Here’s the video:

 

Main Session Part 2:

1v1 Dribbling

Now that you’ve got the basics down it’s time to bring in an extra player. This extra player can start in ‘passive mode’ and as the drill progresses these players can become active. This allows your players to bring what they’ve learned in the previous part of the session into a more realistic setting.

The video below is quite basic, but you should get the idea and it’s an ideal setup to transition from the previous drill.

Key Coaching Points

• Same as above (Coaching when necessary) plus…
• Use change of pace when they’ve got past their player

Progressions:

• Passive Players
• Active Players
• Points Scoring

Here’s the video…

 

 

Main Session Part 3:

1v1 Dribbling with Goals

This drills transitions on nicely from the last part with more realism added in. It also adds a little more pressure to the situation by having all players involved in the same drill.

Key Coaching Points:

• Same as above (coach when necessary)

Progressions:

• 1 v 2
• Points scoring / competition

And finally, here’s your video…

 

Small Sided Conditioned Game:

The End Zone setup allows you to encourage players to dribbling. The aim of the drill / game is in order to score a goal each team must dribble the ball into the end zone. If a team ‘scores’ the possession changes to the other team.

Quick Tips:

• Make sure you don’t set you pitch yp too big – you’re focusing on dribbling after all!

Here’s a video that explains the set up well…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e4O29k8icU

 

Key Coaching Points:

• As above plus…
• Assess the best route to attack or dribbling into
• Keep ball close when dribbling in tight spaces
• Learn when to run with the ball vs dribbling with the ball

 

Enjoy!

• Coach