Football with Purpose: Training to Play, Not to Repeat

 

As we’ve discussed previously, in this section we’ll talk about football training drills used with the teams I’ve coached, providing context and focusing on the reasoning and objectives we pursued with them.

👉 If you want to learn how these drills were created and what ideas led me to this way of working, click here.

Context

 

We are in the 2022 season with Halifax Wanderers in Canada.

The group of players had a high technical level, and we were looking to work with them on a task to follow the specific warm-up led by the fitness coach.

The task needed to have clear characteristics such as: technical gestures, decision-making, speed in that decision-making, and player mobility.

We specifically wanted to avoid tasks where players would have to dribble or take multiple touches. We wanted their decision-making to be as fast as possible, meaning the technical gesture had to be a one-touch pass.

That led us to develop the exercise presented below, which was used on different days of the week—sometimes as part of the warm-up, sometimes as a lead-in to the main part of the training session.

 

Passing Wheel with Decision-Making

We set up a square, each side measuring 10 meters, and placed two poles at each corner, spaced two meters apart and facing each other diagonally.

Players are positioned in the middle of the two poles at each of the four corners, forming the four vertices of the square.

Facing the square from right to left (which is the orientation of the task), we place two players on the right and left sides, and one player in the center, who will start the task.

The player in the center of the square must make the decision, but the task—and the decision-making—begins when the player they are looking at starts moving toward one of the square’s corners.

As soon as the movement starts, the central player must pass the ball to the opposite corner.

After the first pass, everything must be very dynamic.

The player who receives the ball will immediately pass to the center for the player who made the first movement, so that this player can repeat the decision-making process on the opposite side.

Rotation

 

    • The player who had the ball moves to the line where the first passer came from.

    • The player who receives the pass moves into the position of the player who made the movement.

    • The player who made the initial movement seeks to receive the ball inside the square and becomes the ball carrier to start the sequence again from the opposite side.

Key Points to Keep in Mind

 

    • The distance between the poles or cones can vary based on the technical level of the players. If needed, the square can be adjusted into a rectangle to increase the distance and the decision-making time.

    • Once the task starts, the sequence should flow naturally without pauses.

    • The players in the middle—the ones making movements to trigger decision-making—should be alone and not form a line. Lines should only exist at the corners of the square, and players must be attentive to avoid obstructing the path of the active participant.

⚽ Want more real exercises designed for real player development?

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