Width in seven a side games at under ten

[mcolwell1959]

Hi,

pitches in our part of Kent are a bit boggy at present, especially down the middle. The team i coach are successful and are top of their league and unbeaten this season. I try to coach width which is important at all times but especially now beacaus eof pitch condition. Does anyone have any good drills for coaching width in seven a side?

Thanks

[Chezz]

One of the drills i do is mark out a small pitch and have two players as the wingers who can only stay on the edge of the pitch which I have marked out. The game goes on as normal in the middle. It helps the players realise they always need an option outwide and helps them shout for the ball. It worked okay for me.

Steve

[Val]

I've done the same, and it works well as a 7v7 game because it really opens up the middle as well. Giving players more time on the ball allows for greater switching/wide play. The wrinkle I add to the game pretty quickly is that if a player with the ball moves wide, the wide player can move into the main field.

[ian.curry]

Yes - wings.

Basically 5 yards space where they cannot be tackled. The wingers play for whoever is in possession, and have a maximum of 3 touches. They must return the ball to the team they received it from, otherwise they get 3 pressups.
You can progress this by having a 1v1 situation on the wing, having 1 winger on each wing in each half(4 in total), or making it a 2v1 situation on both wings.

Your team is doing well so I would personally continue with what you are doing, they may be using the wings more than you realise. I like the 'fix it before it breaks' philosophy, but remember your good development is partly down to the training they already receive.

[mcolwell1959]

Thanks for the feedback. I am doing this kind of stuff and do force them to use the players in the wider areas that i cone off on a grid. It does work but it is good to get feedback from others that thye find it helps. One of the problems i find is you get sucked in to a game playing down the middle with lesser sides as they play their limited game down the middle. The better opponents do tend to open it up. I guess this is just of case of drumming in to them the need to use the width of the pitch and support one another whenever they can?

[Val]

I just got the Liverpool DVD The Greatest Premiership Game Ever Played, and I guess it's on SkySports frequently, but show the kids that game. Really great wing play, both Ginola on the wing, and for Liverpool how having a wide player gave McManamon acres of space to run in.

[bewler]

I coach at Swindon Town School Of Excellence for Under 8's, 9's and tens and also run my local Under 10's team.

A constant drill i prefer to do with the boys is width training in a match situation have the usual 7 a side width of the pitch but shorten the length and you can only score from crosses or when the balls been played out wide a certain number of times, also set out different coloured markers along the touchline and use these as points as to where to play the ball.

Hope this helps

[Jerzy]

I was at the National Soccer Coaches Assoc of America annual convention and I saw a demonstration by Jitka Klimkova, the head of the Czech women's U17 team. She did just this game, limiting defensive access to the channels to encourage width. When she asked if there were any questions, I asked for another game to play (since we've all used this one, it seems) and she seemed to indicated that simple was better and that she didn't really have another game to teach this particular aspect.

If you're looking for progressions you can use for coaching, here's how she warmed up her girls.

One drill that I learned this summer that I used this fall and will continue to use, is passing through gates. Set out several "gates" of cones, two cones maybe a yard or so apart. Pair up your players and then have them run to the gates, pass the ball through the gate, and then dribble to another gate. A much better warmup than just knocking the ball back and forth. Anyway, this coach had the girls dribble through the gate, with the supporting player doing an overlap as her partner was dribbling through the gate. I liked this progression.

Then her next exercise was two pairs of players, each pair at the end of 15 by 40 channel. One girl hit the ball long to the other two. 1st progression, the receiving girls just did a 1-2 and then hit a long ball to the serving pair. This was just getting used to hitting a longer ball than the girls would normally pair up to do if left to themselves. Then the 2nd progression has the receiving pair doing an overlap with the player overlapping hitting the longer ball. This way you're conditioning the overlapping player to deliver a cross following the overlap. I thought these were better progressions than I had for this game.

I think that this is what I'm going to focus on for the team next fall when we move to a bigger field.