Technical Drills

The first touch is the whole tactic. Everything else you're planning — the shape, the press, the way you want to build — all of it assumes a player can receive a ball and still have options half a second later. If she can't, none of the rest of it exists.

That's why this page is bigger than it looks. Receiving on the half-turn is not a drill, it's the difference between a midfielder who plays forward and one who plays backwards for ninety minutes. Scan and call receiving teaches her to look before the ball arrives, which is the habit nobody is born with and everyone good has.

Ball mastery gets a bad name because of the videos: a thousand toe-taps, beautifully filmed, transferring nothing. Used properly it's fine. Countdown ball mastery and the mastery circuit are short, sharp and early in the session, and then you get on with football. Ten minutes, not thirty.

Weak foot is worth its own slot for one reason. A player with one foot can be defended by pointing her towards the other one, and by U14 every decent opponent knows it. Weak foot gate passing is dull and your players will complain. Do it anyway, twice a month.

The striking drills — driven pass ladder, driven clipped whipped, range finder — matter more than coaches think. Most teams cannot switch play because nobody can hit a ball forty yards with any conviction. That's a technique problem wearing a tactics costume.

Soccer tennis is on here because it works and because they'll ask for it. Fine by me.