Full Season Training Program Book This article is a sample from our new book, "Full Season Training Program", by Lawrence Fine of finesoccer.com.  The training session was part of pre-season training and was conducted on August 28, 2002. The team went on a 20 minute jog and stretch led by the coaches. The field players start off doing one touch working going back and forth across the mini field. This starts with players in groups of two with one ball per group. The players are lined up across the sideline with one player on the sideline and the other two yards away. They start passing back and forth with one-touch passes and do this at full speed for a two minute period.  After the 2 minute period is up, the coach says “Go” and they keep passing one touch back and forth but now are slowly moving across the field. They do this all the way across the field and then back. The objective is to get a lot of touches in and NOT to get across the field quickly. When they finish this, they do the same thing with inside of the foot volleys (the player starting with his back to the field is the server and the other player does the volley's). When they get to the other side of the field, they switch roles. This is done for inside of the foot volleys, inside of the foot volleys, thigh trap volley backs, chest trap volley backs, head trap volley backs and jumping headers. Between each set, the players get to stretch again. While the field players are getting their touches in, the keepers go through their regular warm up (sitting, kneeling and catchers position).   The goalkeepers then work on footwork across the goal mouth. The way this was done was to have a server with 12 balls on the 18-yard line six yards outside the line of the goal and another server, without balls in the same position on the other side (See Diagram 76). If the server sees the keeper giving up too much of the near post, he shoots near post, if this isn't happening, the ball gets played square to the second server for a first time shot. The keeper has to step back toward the goal and readjust his steps to he can get over and cut off the angle as quickly as possible. The run is almost a U shape run and is done with a quick drop step with the inside foot. Each keeper did this three times from each side (it actually took longer than expected because they were trying to go directly across to get cut off the angle and weren't able to get their feet set so we had to repeat this more than planned). Just a side note. None of the keeper training takes place in the goal mouth. We have a special area just for keeper training which we can beat up all we want. Even if we didn't have this area, we would move the goals out of the goal mouth and would NEVER do this type of training in the goal mouth because it will quickly tear up the field)    Next, the players all joined together on the practice field. We start working on a forward and back attack. This basically means we had three midfielders and three forwards and the midfielders would play a diagonal ball to a forward and the forward would work on playing the ball back first time to a midfielder who would either shoot it, or, if he received it at a bad angle would serve the ball in to the forwards who are making near/far runs and another midfielder would cover the 12-yard spot. This was done with no defense.   Next, we add in more of a pattern into the attack. Two center mids play balls back and forth to each other and then one passes the ball forward to the center forward. The center forward passes the ball BACK to one of the outside backs (his choice) and then this player knocks a long diagonal ball to one of the outside forwards who can do anything he wants. His options include, bringing the ball down and shooting, knocking the ball back to a midfielder for a shot or serving the ball to runners.     Next, we added in defenders (four backs and two midfielders) to put pressure on the attack. The only rule is that the two center midfielders must find the center forward before the attack can begin. The way players rotate in on this without wasting a great deal of time is the following: If a player is going replace an outside player, he just steps off to the side. If he is going to replace a center player he just kneels down on the field so he isn't involved in the attack. The kneeling players really don't get into each others way and it forces the players to be aware of what is going on at all times. If a coach is going to be on the field during an exercise, he puts on a different color pinny (we use bright orange for this) so that everyone knows he is NOT involved in the play. Next we did S4-s for conditioning (10-10 shuttles three times, 20-20 shuttles three times then three 10-20-30 shuttles. Training ended with a 15-minute jog and stretch.

Copyright© 2002 World Class Coaching

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