Happy New Year, I had previously planned to blog my month-by-month journey as a grassroots football coach about 18 months ago. The unpublished series, before I shelved it, contained things I had learned/observed in order to act as an aide-mémoire as I continued along the coaching pathway. I still kept my little nuggets of observation in various Google docs, but instead I thought I would revisit the idea of a blog once I got my group of footballers into a more structured setting (7v7, weekly league). This way I could digitise some of the successful routines I have coached into the side, reminders of what we had covered as a group together and my notes on this group of fledgling ‘ballers’. Please note - this is not a Football Manager blog but there are certainly overlapping elements that go from ‘screen to green’ (a term coined by friend Ed Wilson which I have now paid for the rights to use as this blog’s title).
Background
This is 7v7 Part 1: a recap on coaching a group of eleven girls aged 8-9 for the last four months, as they embark on their first season in an all girls league. Some are experiencing a matchday for the first time, others have been with me since the age of 5-6…and have progressed through the Wildcats scheme and around 12 months of 5v5 football festivals. No girls will be named in this series, except for my daughter Alice.
About Alice
Now aged 9, potentially very gifted with the ball at her feet. Definitely one of our better ball carriers, with good balance and agility. Played daily with me in the garden during the first covid national lockdown in March/April 2020. That’s where her thirst for football came about, and she’s been kicking a football ever since with like minded girls in her local Wildcats centre. What Alice lacks right now is work ethic in training…and to an extent in games too. But this is as much about her journey as it is mine, so it will be interesting to see if I still write this about her in a few years time.
The wider group
We have eleven players registered with the FA and the County League in question. It’s a good mix too, we’re not overly reliant on one player and the goals are spread around the team nicely. We have a dedicated goalkeeper now, who played outfield in 5v5 but has expressed a desire to move between the sticks (to which I almost wept with joy). If I had to broadly segregate outfield players into ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ qualities, it’s a fairly even split too: four defensive players and six offensive. Perfect for a 2-3-1. But note - all girls have had an opportunity to try out any area of the pitch.
The group trains for 1 hour on a 3G pitch each week. They then play 7v7 games each weekend. 7v7 matches are 50 minutes (25 min halves), on a 60 x 40 yards (55 x 36.5m) playing surface. The FA mandates an opposition retreat to the halfway line on a goal kick (which has allowed me to develop a few early coaching sessions). There are no offsides.
Being able to coach on things mid-week that you see in the game is vital. I would say the previous matchday, and our fixture list, dictate most of my mid-week session content.
Footballing concepts
Some of the girls I coach are pretty switched on with footballing vernacular, they either have a parent speaking footballing terminology to them OR they have older siblings (usually brothers) chatting the lingo. However, there are girls in my group who just like playing. Alice is a good example, she doesn’t really like watching much football, and she is the eldest child. It is therefore imperative that I introduce the footballing concepts in a patient way, and the way I have done this is through various mini-games/team building examples at the start of a mid-week training session…
Concept 1: Pressing.
This is a very easy concept to describe, and to also show demonstratively. Pressing was described to the girls as an action to “get close up to an opponent, as soon as possible”. It’s demonstrated in a simple race to the cones. Either straight lines or L shapes, both work well. They got it.
Ignore the Americanisms for now (more on that later).
Concept 2: Jockeying
Perhaps not widely used these days (outside of FIFA type games), but the idea of jockeying it to force your opposition into a mistake or away from your goal by staying on your feet as a defender. This concept needed introduction after I noticed we often invited pressure in games OR were overdoing the press (and one girl going to ground a bit too eagerly for the slide tackle fame). To introduce the concept, I simply asked two of the girls to herd their teammates who were blindfolded into a secure coned area.
Rules: herders cannot use their hands (hands behind backs), sheep can. +1 for sheep in the pen. -1 if a sheep touched the end zone shown in black. After this session, I could use ‘sheepherding’ as a reference point in future discussions and jockeying drills within the same session. Matchday example: “we need to herd the opposition away from goal, as if they are sheep”. They got it.
Concept 3: Muscle Memory
This has not been a mini-team building game. It was simply a discussion before we went into a session of shooting drills. Do something over and over again, and it becomes second nature. I read up on muscle memory and apparently it takes 5-7 weeks with constant training. At the time, I opened up the calendar and told the girls that the new shot or turn they want to learn can be delivered by Christmas. Just having this discussion, and seeing them reflecting on their own football repertoire ground the session. They got it.
Concept 4: Who doesn’t get tired?
I found the move from 5v5 to 7v7 a challenge. Not only is the pitch bigger, the games are much longer (around 20 minutes in fact). But the girls aren’t necessarily that much bigger to cope…7v7 is something they play for another year after U9s.
So, I asked the girls: “who doesn't get tired on a football pitch”? Nobody got it initially, but a simple two-team race to get all the balls into team safe zones soon got it out of them. Instead of all running and dribbling to each ball, use one girl to go and get them and get her to ping balls near to the safe zones for others to collect and score points. Let the ball do the work. They got it. As a side note, I still needed the girls to improve their stamina. Sadly I cannot just put a week of Quickness training in like FM, so instead I introduced ladders every other week…so that team building + ladders alternate and provide a nice change-ups for the girls week-to-week (more on this later).
Other notable team building activities that I did in first few months, mainly to encourage communication and teamwork:
Floor is lava - two teams with three bits of paper each. The aim is to get all players to an end zone…you can only step on the bits of A4 paper, because the floor is lava [duh]. Who can think outside of the box?
Dribbling to coloured cones based on 50-50 questions e.g. Would you rather win 1-0? (head to blue cone) or Would you rather win 5-4? (head to orange cone). No right or wrong answers (except for when I say Arsenal or Tottenham), but it gets them thinking whilst on the ball.
Team Tag - 4-5 girls link hands and try to tag the others, without breaking hands. Communication is key, teamwork essential.
One Ball, two teams, four coloured end zones. Coach raises one of four colour bibs for players to pass and move towards. Goal is scored if ball is controlled within end zone. Girls have to look up, communication and space out. If you have another coach or volunteer, even better. Get them to alternate raising a bib with you. Girls have to use ‘scanning’ and it’s a nice way to introduce what that is.
Noughts and Crosses - either sprints or dribbling exercises with ball to pick up a bib to drop in a 3x3 grid of cones. Two teams, and always a motivator pre-match.
My Favourite Drills…
My biggest lesson learned so far is that some of the best sessions are either spontaneous or adapted on the fly. They are usually best when I simply focus on a traditional warm-up exercise and scale it up from that. Early day Coach Tony was perhaps overthinking football drills, and to an extent I think that’s my nature anyway, but I look back on some of the sessions and clearly see that some of the best ones are where I allowed them to evolve naturally.
I also discovered that the environmental factors play a bigger part than I initially expected. You could have the best dribbling or shooting session planned out, but if it’s torrential rain (which it has been a few times), then the girls were simply not focussed enough to execute it. 3G means I never had to call off a session, we’ve trained in minus temperatures already whilst the parents go sit in the car. The girls are tough, so it’s not a criticism of them at all. Eleven adult Joey Bartons, if there is such a thing, would be unfocused too.
Anyway, here are my best drills which work on some of the previous concepts mentioned…
(1) Playing Out From The Back
As mentioned previously, the FA encourages teams to increase their familiarity with playing out from the back by asking the opposition to retreat to the halfway line on goal kicks. So, this naturally became the focus on early sessions. I wanted my team to grasp this early on as it’s the majority of our starting points in games. Luckily the two new girls coming into the team for 2023/23 are natural pivots in a 2-3-1 to nail this. They grasped it well within a couple of hours. They now confidently take a few touches from a short goal kick and will now make lateral passes to my wide players.
NFL-ball.
I read up on NFL training routines (and had the help of my podcast co-host to cross-check a few bits of terminology for me), with a Quarterback and Wide Receiver interchanging. This then became a 4v2 and 3v1 in separate groups, where you had offensive players always having a numerical advantage. In a similar session later in the year, I revisited this but wanted to reward the pivots a bit more IF they won it back, so I had a few plastic bowling tenpins at home; these acted as goals for the QBs to play a clearance into. These kind of drills eventually then led into a match scenario where you have fixed players in wide channels…goals are worth more if they are involved in the build up to a goal.
4v2.
3v1.
(2) Passing Crossing + Shooting
Who doesn’t love a good shooting session? The girls love it when they are continually hitting the nets, and the below couple of drills mean they all get a constant supply of shooting opportunities…
A little four-way interchange then sees a player pass into space. Encourage Wingers to dribble into the crossing area, with a few touches. The two strikers are to cross runs, one back post/one front post. This is something I will regularly revisit, as I want the attackers to be hard to mark/read when they grow up into more structured games. A couple of girls are now doing this in attack and it’s lovely movement, and a huge departure from the ‘bees over honeypot’ football I have seen during 5v5 days.
Step 1 - Keep It Simple.
Step 2 - Encourage Wingers to max 1-2 touches.
Step 3 - Strikers first time shots.
After doing the above, the players are then primed for the following shooting drill which is something I went back to on-and-off throughout 2023. I could use a tactical pad-type software and make it into a GIF, but hopefully photos suffice. Important: Attacker receives balls from A, B and C in three sequences:
A - Focus on the attacker to take a touch and shift onto the right, one-two touch to set sights and shoot.
B - Focus on the attacker back to goal, touch/turn and then shoot.
C - One-two with C, before making a run into the area (linking in with previous drill), shoot.
Girls rotate anti-clockwise. Attacker becomes an A (or joins queue), A to B, B to C, C now attacker. Rinse repeat.
Step 1 - Keep it simple, focus on hitting target.
Step 2 - Increase speed, focus on one touch and then shoot.
Step 3 - Invert so you work on left foot.
(3) Short + Long Passes (aka Tony’s Triangles)
One of the drills I am most proud about is a trio of triangles that I adapted from a simpler YouTube routine I saw. It was in my head for a few weeks stewing, until I had the idea to introduce a third outer triangle to improve our long passing. It also forms a good pre-match routine too. It is fairly ambitious for U9s in my opinion, and you can also add your GK to it too for extra carnage…encouraging them to work on long throws/kicks as part of the outer trio:
‘Star of Tony’
One ball between Reds and Blues: 1 interchange passes with A + B before making the pass to 2. 2 will then interchange passes with B+C etc.
One ball between D, E and F, who pass long, avoiding other girls. This is where you can add the GK to either do long throws or kicks. Players will work on scanning, as their routes may be blocked with the two inner triangles.
Swap girls allow them to experience all types of short/mid/long passes.
It looks wild, and at first the girls were apprehensive…but it looks brilliant when all three triangles are interchanging well. You can adapt it slightly too, as I did in one session, where 1 is now making a longer pass to B, who then passes directly to A who then makes a pass into space to 1 to then return it to 2. Rinse repeat.
Keeping in the long passes theme, I then split a pitch in three and had a group of girls in the middle attempting to block long passes (or long GK drop kicks). For every ball making it over to the overside is a goal. For every interception back to me, or a fellow coach, scores the middle group a goal.
An added step was to ask one of the middle girls to come out and press (Step 2) and a final step is essentially a mini-game of 3v1, with two defenders allowed to press. But long passes still needed to make the ‘goal’ across the divide (Step 3).
(4) Side Foot Pass ‘n’ Moves (with ladders and crossing)
Who knew a quick video of England Men’s training on X (formerly Twitter) would take my ladders to a next level? It’s really simple, but just asking the girls to roll their foot over the ball and make a 1:1 with me between cones [before doing ladders] grounded them for the session ahead. Carrying the ball across ladders, they would then dribble back around to the end of the queue. I found this the right level of ball work, but also warmed them up enough in the really cold months. They loved it too:
Exceptional passing and movement are my way to beat the press, and that’s my vision one day for this group of girls. To emphasise this, I had a session devoted to passing and moving on the back of the ladders:
Blues don’t move, always passing straight into the centre grid. Reds to meet the pass in the centre grid (focus on timing of run). All passes are forward, can girls make them with the side foot? I added in scoring to see which group of girls could get to 20, 30 and then 50(!) before the ball went out of play.
Building on previous drills that are very similar, this is a three player routine: A making pass and moving forward to box. B receives and lays it off to C for cross to A. Two groups alternating to invert right foot Vs left foot crosses. Encouraging the inside of the foot at every opportunity. We then went into a longer-than-usual end game that evening, goals were worth double if I saw this type of goal.
(5) Games Nights
In the week before Christmas break, I actually saw the best football from the group…despite having no session plan. We simply played for the full hour, with the only breaks coming from me to update them as to what I was annotating on a whiteboard. The first half hour of the game was looking out for all the bits we worked on previously: Pressing, Scanning, Jockeying, Crossing, Playing Out Of The Back etc. Every girl did an element of it. Then, in the second half of the game, it was all about asking the girls to try something new. Whether that’s a skill, piece of movement, or in one girl’s case being louder than her usual introverted self. Every girl did an element of the new, and I was delighted.
The Future
Some sessions and drills simply have not worked as well as I would have liked. The plan in 2024 is to revisit some, and tweak in a way that suits. That being said, I have seen an improvement in every player and as I said to a fellow coach at my club: “all ships float in a rising tide” (I may have butchered the correct idiom here, but oh well).
What I mean by that goes back to what I wrote in the background section about the wider team. We are not reliant on one single player, and as player sickness has shown…we had to dig deep in some of the games in 2023 and experiment with our starting lineups. But having all girls understanding and playing in the same style meant our second round of results against the same seven teams were massively improved. We scored in every game and won more than we lost or drew, and for a passing team that doesn’t aim to capitalise on no offsides, it is wonderful to see. I do believe this group can do very well if they stick at it, I cannot wait to see how they fair in 2024.
As mentioned, this post is primarily for my own look-back. But if there is a session that you want to do or adapt, go ahead and feel free to let me know how you got on. If you want me to explain any of it further, feel free again to get in touch. Peer learning is great in grassroots coaching, and I’m certain I’d get as much out of it as you would do.
Thanks for reading and happy coaching ⚽
Tony / FM Grasshopper