 Hello and welcome to the Supreme Sport YouTube channel. My name is Joel and today I'm gonna be talking you through a session plan. I coach an under eights team and an under tens team. I've done this session with both groups. It works very well with both. I'd say this is actually fit from eight to 12 year olds. So if you are coaching any of those age groups, give this session a go. Let me know how it goes. Leave it in the comments, email us. I'd love to hear your feedback. So this session is working on link up play. My team sometimes struggled to create chances so I put this session together to try and fix that. Obviously it is gonna take time to see a vast improvement. I have seen a better understanding from my forwards on how to link up, create chances and score more goals. So this session is broken up into a warmup, a first drill, a progression of the first drill and then a match at the end where we can put what we've learned into a game situation. So let's get straight into this warmup. As you can see, there is not a lot of equipment used which is why I'm a really big fan of this session. All you need, I'd say either the maximum of five cones. So as you can see, I've got two lines of four, separated by these two cones here. Let's say the left-hand side will start with the ball. The person at the front of this cue will pass it onto the person in this cue. Once they've done this, they're gonna follow their pass onto this cue and then join the back of that line. Once the right-hand side's received the ball, they're gonna do the exact same thing. They're gonna pass it over to this cue and then follow their pass back onto this cue. It will keep a constant movement flowing. It's a very simple warmup. However, it is very good to get them passing early. Make sure their mistakes get out of them before we get into the drills. Make sure you're setting a good standard early on in the warmup because that creates good habits for the drills and the progressions and the matches. Obviously, this can get tedious and it's very important to keep their attention. This encourages them to chat less and they'll be interested in what you have to say. So to progress this, what I've did is I've got the fourth player on the right-hand side to join the middle here. They now have to pass to the player in the middle. Once the player in the middle has received the ball, the player in the cue is gonna make a run this way. The player in the middle then feeds it back to the person in the cue. The runner then passes the ball back into the other cue and then joins that line. So in short, they are doing a one-two with the player in the middle. A simple but effective and relevant warmup. If your team does struggle with this, encourage them to do it slowly to start off with so they get it correct. Once they get into the habit of not giving the ball away or any stray passes, then you can encourage them to pick up the pace. Now that your team's warmed up, we're gonna move on to the next drill. So moving on to the next drill. As you can see, I have two lines of four. My attackers are highlighted in blue. My defenders are highlighted in red. This drill focuses on their first touch and their finishing. Here's how it works. So the defender is always gonna start with the ball. The defender is gonna pass it to the front of the attacking cue. Once the attacker has received the ball, it then turns into a one-v-one between the attacker and the defender. And obviously, if they beat the defender, they have the keeper to beat. This puts them into good habits when they receive the ball after linking up with their forwards and encourages them to be much more direct. This is also a good exercise for your defenders because it works on their ball playing because they're passing it to the attacker and also they're jockeying. You can always make this competitive by adding a point scoring system. If the attacker score, it's a point to them. If they don't, the defenders get a point. Once you've let your team have a good go at this, you can progress it by adding yourself to the side. Defender starts with the ball, passes to the attacker. Once the attacker has his first touch, it then turns into a two-v-one. Now you can see how the warmup was relevant because he works on our one-twos. The attacker could pass it to me, for instance. The defender draws himself in, the attacker makes the run. I feed it to the attacker, the attacker scores. This is a really good way to focus on their movement and finish him. Now, if you really want to make it difficult for the attackers, you can even add two defenders because then when the attacker feeds the ball to me, one defender will press and one defender will jockey. This encourages the attacker to really think about the run that they have to make. For instance, they could come into here, I feed it, they score. Once the attackers have a good understanding of this, you take yourself out and let an attacker do your role. And that's it for the first drill. Let's move on to the progress version. So here is the progress version. As you can see, little to no cones have still been used. Let's talk through this one. So this time, the defender is gonna start with the ball through the middle cone. The defender will dribble the ball towards the goal and then have a shot. Once the defender has had his shot, he then has to high-five the goalkeeper. As soon as the defender high-fives the goalkeeper, they turn around and then it turns into a two-v-one between the front of each cue on the wide. Make sure you let each side take it in turns of who starts with the ball. So now the defender has drawn themselves out. We can do a one-two, he draws himself in, one-two, goal. Another possible way of scoring is if the attacker dribbles towards goal, the other attacker creates an option. The defender jockeys that attacker and when we have a shot, a goal on our own. This works on their decision-making, which is really important in the final third. It's also a great exercise for the defenders, allowing them to dribble, get comfortable with the ball, even have a shot, you know, defenders still can score goals. Also, testing their reactions in a two-v-one situation. Obviously, the attackers do have an advantage because it's a two-v-one, but if the defender gets it right, it will do their confidence a world of good. You can make this competitive by adding point scoring. However, I wouldn't totally recommend it because it might be a bit demoralising for the defenders because the attackers have such an advantage and it may lead to their confidence being knocked, which is not what you want. You can progress this by having two defenders go forward. Once one of them has high-fived the goalkeeper, we can have three attackers going forward, have one in the middle and one each flank. Try and make sure your middle player has the ball. This will really test their decision-making, making sure they find the right pass, whether it's this side, this side, depending where the defenders go, or having a shot or goal. Once you've done this, send them for a drink and then get them ready for the training match. Before you start the match, encourage your players to do what they've learned. You can do this by every time they do a one-two, it counts as an extra goal, or if they score with a one-two, it's double points. Either way, really try and encourage them to link up as a team. And once you've done this, you should be all done. After these drills, your team should have a much better understanding on passing movement, given goals and decision-making, and not to mention finishing as well, which will allow your team to score more goals and create more chances on the match day. So that is the end of the video. I hope you did enjoy. Feel free to give this session a go. Once again, let us know how it went. Let us know if your team improved. Even if you tweaked it to your own team's needs, we'd love to hear it. If you want more videos like this, hit the like button and make sure you subscribe for more content from myself. So last but not least, thank you very much for watching and have a great day. See you later.