Kids enjoy being a part of soccer practice games the most when they get to score as many goals as possible. For this reason, you must look for opportunities to score goals and integrate for them. If you try, you’ll find countless ways that can be used to create such opportunities for them. For example there are small sided games, shooting drills, and full-field scrimmages.
During small sided games and full field scrimmages, you’re required to keep changing the promotional ways to score additional goals. You can include such games that can be played without a goalie, or restrict their moves inside the warning lines. The current goalpost can be extended or extra goals can be integrated for enhancing the chances of enhancing goal scoring.
Once the players develop their shooting skills and tactical understanding in soccer training, generating more goals gets easier. Similar to passing skills, it works well to initiate shooting methods pretty early in the development of kids but lay more emphasis at the later stages.
Doing soccer drills is also one of the methods to make the players skilled at shooting techniques. Shooting drills develop and improve the shooting skills that players require to successfully score goals. So it becomes your duty as a coach to help your players grow as experts in shooting techniques.
In your soccer exercises, coach the players how to strike the ball appropriately while shooting it. Players are free to shoot at close range from the inside of the foot. When they use the inside of the feet, it increases the shooting accuracy. If more power is required to hit the ball, ask the players to strike the ball using the instep of the foot, with toes pointed downwards and ankle locked.
The height of the shot is solely dependent on how the non-kicking foot is positioned. So players should be taught to position the non kicking foot a little ahead of the ball to keep the shot low. Ensure that there are no distractions such as moving balls, moving shooters, or defenders so that the players can focus only on striking the ball.
Start the drill progression in soccer practice games using a stationary ball and a shooter. As you move on with the shooting techniques, increase the challenge by putting the shooter in action before he/she hits the ball. This change will deviate from the accuracy of the striking efforts at first, because the player’s visualization must serve a double purpose.
One, it helps the shooting player to get some space in the direction of the ball and two, it helps them manage their foot right where the ball is.
As players grow in confidence, increase the difficulty by putting both the shooter and the ball in a moving state. When they make progress in shooting, make them receive the balls at different speeds.
Here it is! Develop more opportunities for the players to score goals in soccer practice games and make the most of practice sessions. For even more tips and tricks on youth soccer, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community.
Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Fun Soccer Drills.
Tags: soccer drills, soccer exercises, Soccer practice games, soccer training