US Development Academy Training June 17, 2015
About
Preparing for the Academy Showcase in Indianapolis is a lot of fun. You have to really focus on details and finishing touches to your game plan while still allowing the players to enjoy themselves and get a high intensity training out of it (14 and 15 year old boys don’t have the focus of professionals yet).
The Exercise
We ran this exercise to get them ready to attack midfield and defending lines quickly while staying in a very tight space. The exercise can take 30-40 minutes and touches on a lot of different technical aspects of the game.
We started with 5v2 in the boxes, players had to get 5 passes and play the ball back to the trainer for a point. We then moved it to 5v3, still requiring 5 passes for a point, but now the team had to just play the ball across the grid to the defending team’s remaining two players in their home grid. The last stage is a transition. We played 5v3, but after 5 passes, the team with the ball had to quickly transition into the opposing grid and attack the 2 remaining players and dribble the ball across the endline.
Number of players
10-20 (you can vary the number of players you are working with depending on how many you have) ex: 4v2, 6v3, 6v4 etc.
Exercise Dimensions
Yellow to Blue cones - 15 yards Yellow to Red cones - 10 yards