PDF Preview of "Individual and small Group Training for Strikers"

Italian Training Concepts - Part 7
Individual and Small Group Training for Strikers

Author: Luca Bertolini
Pages: 74
Graphics: 36
Exercises: 33

This book has the goal to coach the strikers from an individual point of view, involving him in 1 v 1 + goalkeeper situations to improve their skills and to let them learn the basic tactical principles of play and to coach them in cooperating with teammates and against more than one defender (numerical advantage and disadvantage situations). This is the summary of the situations of play that the practices aim to coach:

• 1 striker v 1 defender + goalkeeper: striker with the ball at his feet and striker without the ball at the beginning.
• 2 strikers v 1 defender + goalkeeper: 1 striker with the ball at his feet and both strikers without the ball at the beginning.

The area of the field where the practices are set-up is the final third, taking into consideration the division of the field into attacking sub-areas that it is inspired by the positional play philosophy. The final third is divided into three 6 areas (2 along the flanks and 2 in the center); a team is four times more likely to score a goal playing the ball from zone 14 towards the penalty area than the wings. The recovery of the ball in zone 14 leads to a goal almost 80% of the time.

The exercises of the books are set–up and organized as follow:

• The spaces are set-up with grids that correspond to the attacking areas throughout the field’s final third (18 x 25 metres) each.
• There is always a regular goal with the goalkeeper to finish, wherever the practice starts.
• The striker must always beat an opponent (passive at the beginning and then fully active) before shooting.
• When the defender wins the possession dribbles the ball toward the zone 14 and the striker has 6” to recover the possession and then he can try to score again (to coach the principles of play of recovering the ball in that field’s area).
• The striker may face also a time pressure, when he must score within a fix limit of time.
• The strikers (from 2 v 1 to 3 v 3 practices) may start the sequence inside the same grid or inside different grids or they could be required to overload a specific area to create numerical advantage before shooting on goal.
• When defenders are more than one and they can win the ball, they always have to pass it inside zone 14, as in the 1 v 1 practices, and the strikers have 6” to recover the possession to try to shoot on goal again.
• Even in the small group practices, the strikers may face also a time pressure, when they must score within a fix limit of time.
• All the small group practices include the developments of the team’s possession principles of play while attacking (overlaps, underlaps, blind side run, direct and indirect attacks, cut, triangle passing combinations and 1 v 1 duels before passing).