Receiving to play forward in

central areas LEARNING

 OBJECTIVES
This session will help players:
• position themselves to receive and play forward
• combine and link with teammates
• use deceptive movement to receive the ball.

ORGANISATION
• Set up an area of approximately 20x15 yards with a goal at one end
• Four players start the practice within the area, standing on cones – poles or mannequins
can be used if you have them
• Player one starts in the centre of the side opposite the goal
• Player two starts on a cone five yards in front of player one
• Players three and four start on cones high and wide further up the pitch
• If you have more than four players at training, set up more than one pitch and run paral-
lel practices

HOW TO PLAY
Unopposed practice
• Treat the cones as defenders
• To start, player one passes the ball into the space to the side of player two’s cone
• Player two makes an in and out movement away from the cone – they then move into
the space to receive the ball on their back foot
• Once under control, they play the ball to one of the wide players
• The wide player makes a similar in and out movement off their cone before receiving
and trying to score in the goal
• Players then rotate around the starting positions and the activity starts again – play for
four minutes before progressing the practice
Opposed practice
• Remove all the cones from the pitch and instead split it down the middles into two equal
zones
• Add two mini-goals at the end of the pitch without a goal
• You will need six players split into two teams – one team of three will be ‘attackers’ and
the other will be ‘defenders’, of which one is a goalkeeper
• All three attackers start in the half with the mini goals – the defenders and goalkeeper
start in the half with the single goal
• If the defenders win the ball back, they can play in the opposite direction to score in the
two mini-goals