The skills zone

By Tony Carr

This session is designed to improve the dribbling ability and skill level of your players through a series of technical exercises and small-sided games.

1. Improving dribbling techniques to accelerate and change direction.
2. Improving skills to beat defenders.
3. Enhancing a winning mentality.

When dribbling with the ball, your players may have space and they need to pick up speed quickly to use this area. However, when there is little space, players must be able to demonstrate quick feet, skills and turns to get past their opponent.

How to play it

Use an area 25 yards square.

The circuit includes four different techniques that should be worked on for two minutes each.

1. Complete two turns inside the square to reach the opposite side.
2. Players complete a skill to beat the mannequin.
3. Players use quick feet to go diagonally through the 'crazy' cones.
4. Players accelerate and change direction across the area. Four balls work at all times.

How to develop it

Use four goals and four players to play a game (middle picture). Each player has three lives, if a goal is scored in any player's goal, he loses a life. The last player standing is the winner.

You can progress this game so that each player has a goalkeeper on his team (bottom picture). This improves the ability to create space and shooting skills when under pressure. The game is continuous and requires lots of balls.