Youth Soccer Drills: Setting Objectives

There are various types of youth soccer drills that will help you to improve the soccer skills of your players, in an effective way (like for example soccer crossing skills).

However, if you want to get the best results within a limited set frame of time, it is very important for you to set SMART objectives for your players.

What I mean by SMART objectives is that the objective you set for the individual player must be Specific (S), Measurable (M), Achievable (A), Reasonable (R), and Time bound (T).

This means, that you have to set specific short term and long term objectives for the players, and at the same time, you have to keep an eye on their improvement, so that you could act accordingly and set new objectives for them.

What is more, one of the most important things in this regard is that just setting objectives for the players and achieving them through various youth soccer drills in not enough.

Regarding football exercises, you will also have to develop a habit of appreciating your players, whenever they perform well. Likewise, criticising your players all the time for bad performance is also not good.

Instead, you should develop a strategy that could teach the players to blame themselves for bad performance and learn from their own mistakes.

Youth Soccer Drills: Receiving The Ball

The ball control drill is one of the most important youth soccer drills that you need to include in your coaching session. Receiving the ball is just one aspect of ball control, but it is better for the coaches to specifically design and develop a drill to help the players learn only, how to receive the ball in the most efficient manner.

If you are already running and the ball is coming towards you, it is better for you to receive the ball by redirecting the same in your path of running. You should teach your players the best technique to successfully receive the ball that how the players should make contact of their foot with the middle or the top part of the ball, in order to get control of the same.

While practicing these kinds of youth soccer drills, you should also make sure that after getting control of the ball, the player' duty is not to lose the possession of the ball soon.

In order to achieve this successfully, you must ask your players to tap the ball slowly into the direction, where they want to move with the ball. All these things have to be done very quickly.