Week 1 Curriculum
Tiburon Peninsula Soccer Club
Week 1 Curiculum - Dribbling
Juggling: While you wait for all the players to show up for practice please encourage the players to juggle. Try to keep them juggling the ball for about 5 minutes (or more if you feel like the players responds well to it) by giving the players different juggling challenges.
Coaching Point: Encourage the players to use their laces and lock their ankle when the ball hits their foot. Make sure the player puts their foot back on the ground after touching the ball to regain balance. Example
Challenge the players to get as many successful “juggles” within 30-60 seconds. Give them another chance to beat their number!
Exercise 1 A – Foundation: Dribble inside a Square (Skills and ball mastery)
All players with a ball in a 30 x 30 foot square
Start dribbling within the square and on coaches command
stop and do 10 seconds of:
- Toe taps - Example
- Inside toe touches - Example
- Scissors (ball stays still, feet scissor around ball)- Example
Exercise 1 B – Changing Direction using Sole, Outside and Inside part of the foot.
Exercise 2 – Changing of direction/Relay Race
- Set up: Create a number of channels with cones. Keep no more than 3 players in each channel. Each channel should have 4 cones so there are 4 lines.
- Distance between the cones: 4 yards, 2 yards and 4 yards
- Guidelines: - 2-3 players in each channel. 1 ball per group
- 1st player in each channel dribbles straight out to the 3rd line and change direction using the following surface:
1)Outside cut
2) Inside cut
3) Sole/bottom of the foot
Coaching Points: Encourage each player to just use 1 touch to change direction
Example of this exercise
Exercise 3: Shark and Minnows
You can use a circle, square or rectangle. Assign 1 player to be the shark. 1st time you can play without a soccer ball. The shark is trying to tag all the minnows. You can allow the minnows to become a shark or have them do juggling outside the area. Play until there are no more minnows left.
2nd time you let all the minnows have a soccer ball and the objective for the minnows is to keep control of their ball as long as possible.
Example of the game
Exercise 4: 1 versus 1 changes of direction w/ goals
Set up: Create a field with cones. Measurements 20 yards long by 14 yards wide
Add goals or use cones as goals. Put the goals on the end lines
Organize the players into 2 groups. 1 group should have the soccer balls by there feet standing by the mid stripe of the field. The other group should be facing the group on the opposite sideline by the mid stripe
Rules: The player with the ball passes the ball across the field. Player receiving the ball becomes the attacker the other player the defender. Either player can score by DRIBBLING through the cones that are used for a goal or by passing the ball into either Pugg Goal if you use them.
Coaching points: Encourage the players to change direction to get away from their defender. The more changes of direction the better. Encourage the players to use the 3 different ways of changing direction that they used in Exercise 1 B
Progression: Make goals larger and add goalkeepers.
Add another defender and attacker to make it 2 versus 2
Exercise 5 – Steal the “Bacon”
- Set up a field 15 * 20 yards with 2 goals
- Split players into 2 teams
- Each player on each team is assigned a number. There should be the same numbers assigned to each team. Example
Game/Scrimmage
Finish practice with small sided scrimmages
Depending on numbers split up the players into teams of 2-4 players. If you have 9 players you can create 3 teams of 3 and play a round robin. 1 team sits out 3 minutes then plays 6 minutes.
Remember – all exercises can be tweaked or modified for your team.