Set Pieces: The Free Goals Lazy Coaches Ignore

Here's a number that should bother you: roughly a third of goals come from dead balls. Now here's the madness — most grassroots teams spend exactly no minutes on set piece routines. Free goals, sat on the table, ignored.

A set piece is the one moment in football where the ball's still, the situation's known, and you can actually plan something in advance — a corner, a free kick, a throw. Everywhere else the game's chaos. Here, for a few seconds, it isn't. Unfashionable, well-drilled teams have always punched above their weight by treating these moments seriously while flashier sides couldn't be bothered. It's the cheapest edge in the game.

The trade-off is basically nothing, which is what makes ignoring them so daft. The only "cost" is ten minutes of training time that everyone would rather spend scrimmaging. But ten minutes a week on one attacking corner and one defensive setup will win you more points over a season than another hour of drills.

Monday, keep it stupidly simple — under-10s can't run NASA routines. One attacking corner: two kids start near the penalty spot and make hard runs to the near post and far post on the kicker's signal, everyone else stays out of the way. That's it. Defensively, decide your approach — man-marking or zonal — and make sure every kid knows their one job before the ball's kicked.

And don't sleep on throw-ins — the long throw is a set piece most teams hand away for nothing. Ask the Gaffer for a corner routine your age group can actually pull off. We go again.