Need help with training my U9s with passing?

Football CoachCoach

Hi Staurt, 

Firstly this won't come over night. Secondly ask your players on a one on one bases how they feel when they play, what emotions goes through them when they are not on the ball and when they are on the ball how do they feel. A players mental state and how they see the game effects 90% of their decisions. 

You say they are playing with their head down? So we need to get them to see options before and after so they can make better decisions. 

One exercise you can do is work in a box 20 by 20 with a player on the outside on each side holding two coloured cones, say red and yellow. These are our servers. 

You then have a 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 no more the 4v4 on the inside. You can decide. I would do no more then a 2v2 with a u9's team.

Now the players on the inside have to try and play a pass to an outside player. But as soon as they do, the outside player opposite to the one which recieved the pass raises a cone above his head. 

The player who made the orginal pass then has to shout out the coloured cone that was raised to gain a point for their team. So yellow if he see's yellow and red if he see's red.

This will get your players use to looking up and around after they have passed and reiceved.

You can progress in many other ways, you can also take this concept and work on more simple basic passing drills. 

You say these 3 players dribble a lot, so what we need them to do is to understand, when to dribble & where to dribble a little bit more then how to dribble as they seem to have grasped the how part.

So add challenges that get them to make decisions on if they should pass or dribble. 

But encourage their strengths.

Football CoachCoach

A drill i use to improve looking up whilst dribbling with a ball is to use three different cone/markers. Red stop with ball trapped with one foot, Yellow do a turn of choice, Green pass and recieve different ball. At first call out the colours as you hold up the marker but then introduce the colours without the vocal help. This encourages them to keep thier heads up whilst dribbling.

Try to spot the last player to react maybe naming and shaming that they didnt have thier head up,

If the players who run with head down are only doing so with the goal in mind take away the goal and make 5 complete passes count as one goal.  

Football CoachCoach

I first work on getting my players to look up as they dribble.  I run backwards in front of them holding up fingers asking them what number I am holding up.  They get used to looking up while dribbling.  Then, move side to side doing the same.  After they are able to do this, I set up about half the field in a six square grid with a goal at each end.  One player from each team is in each box.  They can never leave that box.  They must learn to pass the ball from box toi box to move it upand down the field.  This drill worked very well at the U10 level.

Football CoachCoach

Thanks guys, great advise.

Jay BrittonCoach, England

I've been trying a game with my u9's called PANNA, it's a very fast game so there isnt much standing around. It's a 1v1 game so there will be lots of games going on at once, it's basically one person starts with the ball and must try and get it through the other persons legs by getting him off balance by dummying and moving forcing the other person to move also and opening up his legs in order for our man with the ball to score.

I've picked this and several games like this from a programme called Football Freestyler on challenge on a sunday morning at 9 am, It's a man travelling around the world looking at various footballing cultures and looking at different training methods and games.

It's a very good programme and i have run a few of the games which has improved my players speed,balance and vision.