/Whole-group movement and passing practice
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My comfort zone when it comes to coaching is very much in working with a group of 2-4 goalkeepers, putting on interesting, enjoyable sessions which challenge their basic skills, get them thinking about their goalkeeping and ultimately improve their game.
Stepping outside of that comfort zone is not something I often do, especially to go as far as taking an outfield session with a group of around 20. To progress with my coaching though, I feel it’s important that I make efforts to do that whenever the opportunity arises, and one such opportunity did come up last night with the manager unable to attend training himself, asking me to step in and lead the first part of the session, typically around 30 minutes in length.
Specialising in goalkeeper coaching, this challenged me to broaden my horizons and put on a practice that would prove useful, interesting and, most importantly on a bitterly cold night, keep everyone warm.
Eventually, with a little help from ProSoccerCoaching, I arrived at a practice which challenged the players’ passing, movement, touch and awareness. You can see an overview of this illustrated below, with an explanation following.
The practice

There are two players in the middle, with groups of between 2 and 4 (depending on numbers) gathered at the four corner cones – the entire pitch is around 20-25 yards square.
Two balls are in play and start in opposing corners. The two central players must move off their cones towards the players with the balls, making themselves available for the pass through the “goal” in front of them. The players with the balls play the pass into their feet and immediately make a clockwise movement seeking a return. The return pass is played (completing a one-two) and the player then players a pass to someone in the next group round. Once they’ve played their pass, the player returns back to their cone and joins the back of the queue, whilst the central players must also return to their central cones after each ball.
The practice then repeats with from the other two corner zones with the idea being that a fluid, continuous, clockwise pattern emerges with everyone kept moving as often as possible. This perhaps works best with a group of 10, as you have just 2 players on each corner cone, but can work with 18 provided that no one is left standing around for too long.
Every 2-3 minutes, the two players in the middle swap with two on the outside to keep things fresh. The idea is that this practice starts two-touch but can be evolved to change the direction of play, or to limit the passes to one touch.
The challenges
The primary challenge for me delivering this session were the physical conditions of the environment we were in. The first 30 minutes of our sessions take place on the grass outside the 3G pitch where the majority of it does, which is poorly lit and has a very uneven surface. This invariably leads to plenty of mis-placed passes and unwanted bobbles, however I did take the opportunity to remind the players that they seldom compete on perfect pitches and that uneven surfaces are part-and-parcel of football.
Summary
Overall I’m pleased with the practice itself and the delivery of the session. Players seemed engaged and appeared to understand and get into the flow of things quite quickly. The conditions were challenging and lead to a few complaints, but there isn’t really anything I could’ve done about that. On a personal level, I found this a great confidence booster. When working with a handful of goalkeepers I don’t often need to raise my voice, but addressing a large group spread out over a wider area forced me to be louder and clearer to engage them, something that I hope will benefit me moving forward.
After the group session, I also took my regular goalkeeping practices with the three keeper’s I usually work with and I think this session actually flowed a lot better and had a better structure, in part due to the preceding one, which was good to see.