The thing that changed my Tuesday nights the most was not a clever new drill. It was doing fewer drills and playing more small games. My U12s at Springhead learned more football in twenty minutes of four against four than they did in a full night of cone work. Coaches call these small sided games. If you take one idea into pre season this year, make it this one.
What a small sided game actually is
A small sided game is any game with fewer players than a full match. Three against three, four against four, five against five, up to seven a side. Small goals or big ones, keepers or no keepers, it does not matter much. What matters is that it is a real game with a start, an end and a way to win, not a line of kids waiting for their turn. Because it is a game, the players have to decide things for themselves. Where to move, when to pass, when to run with it, who to pick up. That decision making is the part that shows up on a Saturday.
Why they beat standing in lines
I am not against drills. A finishing drill or a passing pair has its place, and I still use them. The trouble with a static drill is that it removes the two things football is actually made of, an opponent and a choice. A child can look tidy passing into a row of cones and then freeze the moment a defender closes him down. In a small game there is always someone trying to take the ball off him, so he learns to look up, shift his body and pass under a bit of pressure. The touches pile up as well. In a four against four everyone is involved almost the whole time. In a drill where eight kids queue behind a cone, most of them touch the ball once a minute and spend the rest of it chatting.
Set them up so every kid gets touches
The whole point falls apart if you make the teams too big. My rule is simple. The smaller the game, the more each child does. Three against three is brilliant for younger ones because nobody can hide. Four against four is my go to for U12s. Once you reach seven a side you are basically playing a match, which is fine now and then but not what a training night is for. Have enough balls and enough pitches so nobody is standing watching. If I have sixteen kids I will run two four against four games side by side rather than one big eight against eight. Two games means twice as many touches, twice as many decisions and half as much standing about.
Shape the game to coach a topic
This is where small games stop being just a kickabout. You can tilt a game towards whatever you are working on by changing one rule. Want more passing? Say a goal only counts after five passes, or make the pitch wider. Want them to play out from the back? Make every goal start with the keeper. Working on winning the ball back? Give a point for a tackle in the other team's half. Change one thing at a time and tell the kids why. They are sharp, they will work out how to game the rule, and that is them solving a football problem, which is exactly what you want.
Keep the score, keep it competitive
Kids try harder when it counts. Keep the score. Play short games of three or four minutes, then mix the teams up and go again. A losing team that gets a fresh start every few minutes stays in it. I keep a rough tally in my head and sometimes I hand out a daft prize at the end, first to collect the cones, that sort of thing. The competition does the motivating for you. You do not need to shout much. A tight four against four with a bit riding on it will get more out of a quiet kid than any amount of me talking.
A simple session you can run this week
Here is the shape I use most weeks. Five minutes of everyone with a ball, moving and touching it, no queue. Ten minutes of one small technical game, maybe a passing game with a target to hit. Twenty minutes of small sided games, three or four minute rounds, teams shuffled between rounds. Five minutes at the end of proper free play where I say nothing at all. The whole thing fits on the back of an envelope, and the kids get more football in forty minutes than they used to get in ninety.
Let the game do the coaching
The hardest habit to break is stopping the game every thirty seconds to make a point. Try to hold back. Let them play, watch for the same problem happening two or three times, then freeze it, ask a question, and get out of the way. Most of what they need to learn is already in the game if you set it up right. That is the real trick with small sided games. You build the lesson into the rules, then you let the kids find it. If you want more session ideas, our training page has full plans, and if you coach a team and want a hand keeping track of who is turning up and how they are getting on, that is what we built Trac for coaches to do.