Explode, Dribbling Skills in Soccer, Drill!

easy and fun soccer coaching drill designed to improve dribbling skills

• This game requires every player to have a football.

• You should have as many cones as players

Set up : The cones are placed an equal distance away from the circle, say 10-20 yards, depending on age of players

To start with I have the players dribble inside a circle (usually just using the inside circle of the field). The circle is primarily used so the players will keep their head up while dribbling in a confined space.

My instructions inside the circle will include "pull backs", "outside of foot dribble" and so forth. Anything to keep their head up while dribbling.

After about a minute of dribbling I will yell the word "explode". At this time, the players will then explode from the circle to find a cone to dribble to, turn around, and then come back to the circle. The key here is that no two players can go around the same cone, so they have to find another cone if somebody is already ahead of them. I (the coach) stand in centre of the circle and first one back to slap my hand wins.

Other rules I have in place are when players come back to circle they must have control of the ball and stop it in front of me and then slap my hand (I learned this after doing this drill and having the balls fly all over the place because they did not have control of the ball coming back into the circle). It is competitive and can be treated as a fitness drill.

You can also do the drill by how many times each player has come back to the circle to slap hands for a two minute time period.

Explode, Dribbling Skills in Soccer, Drill!