Football/Soccer Session (Moderate): General Practice - Defending The Final Third

Warm Up / Pulse Raiser

Warm Up (10 mins)

Arrival and Warm Up

Arrival Game (5 mins)

Arrival Game + Activation

Rondo of 8v2 and maybe a 6v2.

Warm Up (10 Mins)

- 2 or 3 lines set up for movements.

Running / sideways / skips / disco feet etc.

Add in dynamic stretches of open the gates etc.

Block 3

Block 3 (4 mins)

Progression

One attacking player can now enter the central area unopposed to encourage the attacking to team to look for central passes more often.

This will test the defending teams ability to force the ball wide by stopping split passes.

Use Terminal interventions to show breakdowns in the principles of Defending the Final Third. It also allows the players to have a break as the workload could be intense.

General Practice

Defend final third (3 goals vs 2 goals) (20 mins)

Progressions:

• 1 player from blue team must stay in each wide channel in order to stretch play.
• After first 4-minute block of play, central mini goal is now worth 3 points with the two wider mini goals still worth 1 point. 

Challenges:

• The challenge for the RED team out of possession is to focus on primarily defending the central goal by remaining compact and focusing on the spaces between players. In possession they should look to break and score quickly (10 second countdown or limit on touches can be brought in to emphasise this) in order to create fast turnovers of possession to allow focus on main principle.
• BLUE team should look to be patient in attack and use width to try and drag blues out of narrow shape.

Conditions:

• 40 x 35m area size with 3 mini goals at one end, two mini goals at other.
• Flat markers to be used to create 2 x 5m wide channels to encourage reds to use full width of area and also to give blues an indication of which areas to leave open in order to protect the middle.
• Play always restarts from coach playing into blue to allow for more repetitions of principles.

Targets:

• The target for the RED team is to defend all 3 mini goals (but prioritise central goal) and then look to break quickly and score in their attacking mini goals.
• The target for the BLUE team in the first block of play is to score in any of the 3 mini goals, and then in the second block of play to focus on scoring in the central mini goal (worth 3 points) in order to encourage blues to protect the middle.

Key Points:

Out of possession:  

• protect the middle of the pitch
• force play wide
• stop crosses into the box.

In possession: 

• Width and depth
• Finishing
• Final pass

Interventions:

• Concurrent 
• Terminal (use break between blocks of play as opportunity to complete a terminal intervention).