Timing the pass in soccer: Here are some soccer drills designed for young footballers to improve their passing. The exercise is used to demonstrate the importance of timing your run to receive a pass. In soccer, the more defenders you can cut out of a play with the pass the better it is. Seems obvious maybe, cut the ideal pass is behind the most defenders with an attacker running on to it so the defenders have to turn and chase or face their own goal.
Let’s start with three ways to improve your timing of the pass skills in soccer. Three steps to improve your passing skills.
Number of players: full soccer team
Age range: 10-12
Description: Half of the players have soccer balls at their feet and are dribbling around in the playing area. Players then make eye contact with a player to do a wall pass, dribble exchanges, overlap or double pass – where you play the ball, get it back, and then return the pass again.
This double give and go is all Barcelona – time and time again they play a give and go and return the pass to the ‘wall’ player.
Switch the players who have the ball after each player runs through one of each type of pass mentioned above. This is a good warm up drill and a way for players run through a wide range of passes. Not only should players make eye contact with the players they want to pass with, but get players to call out the player’s name, and by the nature of their run, they let the passer know what type of return pass they want.
One player who’s especially good at timing the pass is Manchester United’s Keven de Bruyne. He has collected over 121 assists so far for Manchester City. Thierry Henry said this about de Bruyne’s passing ability: “What’s interesting about De Bruyne is that he sees things before others. Michael Laudrup was among the best No. 10s ever because with a single pass he could eliminate 6-7 players and it would arrive just in front of the striker to score. Kevin has that ability.”
To keep it simple, start out just doing wall passes and then move on to each type of pass/exchange and then mix them together and let the ball holder decide what type of pass they want to make. In the beginning, the coach should call out the type of pass they want the players to do.
Extra: Check out Kaka’s killer pass. Oh, and if you want to see a genius at work then watch Messi playing killer passes to like this.
Watch this timing the pass soccer drill to implement in your youth soccer team’s training sessions.
Equipment needed: Cones and practice vests.
Exercise Objectives: This exercise will develop each players understanding of “when” and when not” to pass the soccer ball.
Coaching Pointers: Divide your players into two groups. One group will be passing the ball, the second group running with the ball. Set up as in the diagram above. The players passing the ball will have to deal with the traffic of the players running in front of them. They must decide if they have space and time to make the pass, or do they have to hold onto the ball to create space. Alternate roles after several minutes.
Field Preparation: Entire Group 20 x 10 Yards; supply of balls and cones
