 It can be difficult to practice defending on your own, but in this video I want to show you soccer drills for defenders. In this soccer drill for defenders we're using a wall unless you have a partner or two, but the purpose of this drill is to replicate what happens a lot of times as a defender cycling the ball around the back four or the back three. So ball comes from one side, let's say you're playing center back, you want to receive that ball and you want to quickly play it to the other side. When I say quickly, I don't mean rush, I don't mean panic, but as a defender if your job is to switch the ball, it comes from one side, you want to switch it to the other side, you should be playing two, three touch tops most of the time, okay? So if you are receiving the ball from that way and my body's not turned, I'm taking one touch here, maybe I'm taking another touch to set, then I'm playing that pass with the wrong foot, I'm getting myself into trouble, or I'm playing here and I'm turning, I'm not opening up, I'm not keeping my body, let's say the opposite net is over there. So I play this ball, I want to keep my body this way so I can play that pass and then go again. Obviously you don't have a teammate, so just practice a fake pass, change your direction, go the other way, play with the other foot. Opening up the body, play it to the other side, go again. Just opening up the body, facing the field, the field's this way now, facing the field. Switch of play, okay, and you can let that ball roll across your body, or hit it with a bit more pace. Now we're playing two touch and play, okay? Switching feet. Hey, what's up? I hope you're finding this content helpful. Watch this all the way to the end if you want to find out which subscriber got this video's special shout out. Touch and play. Now first step of this drill is opening up the body, seeing the field, not closing yourself off when I know I want to go that way, receiving in half turn so I can switch the ball quickly. The other thing is the quality of your pass. As a defender, you need to be an expert passer, you can't give the ball away. Best defenders have very high passing percentage completion, okay? So when you're playing that pass, focus on the quality of the pass. Go over the ball, open your foot, strong contact, aim for a spot on the wall, hit that spot, go again, yes, good, play. For this defender specific drill, we are not going to use the ball. We're going to practice closing because a skill of being a defender is the movement of being a defender. It's closing players down. So obviously you're going to get a bit of fitness out of this, but what you really want to do here is practice the way you close down the attacker, okay? So first of all, if I'm closing him down, I'm not just going to jog towards him. I want to close that space. If he's receiving the ball, let's give him a ball. If he's receiving the ball, I want to be on him as he receives the ball, okay? So imagine that pass is coming. First that pass is coming as that ball gets there, boom, you want to be here, okay? So focus on closing quickly is number one. For this drill, what you're going to do is I'm going to close him down, close him down, and then practice kind of jockeying back into space, go again. Close him down, jockeying, staying low, jockeying back into space, kind of trapping one way. But a couple of things to this drill. Okay, so you're going to get a fitness practice closing down quickly. So one, speed of the drill, speed of the close. At this point, now I'm getting cautious. Now I'm not running in crazy. He's in my defensive third, I'm getting cautious. So close down quickly. Next is the way I want him to go, the shape of my run. If I run directly at him, set up like this, two ways for him to go, three ways for him to go. What I want to do is think about trapping him, pushing him one way. Let's say I want to take him to the sideline. So I'm going to close quickly, but I'm going to curve my run so I know where he's going. I'm pushing him this way. So practice curving your run, then practice keeping him into that space. Good. If I want to bring him this way, curve my run. Okay. Obviously I look like an idiot running at a dummy with no one there, but this is a very important skill of defending. If you don't know, first of all, if you don't get there in time, if you don't know how to close him, if you're not trapping him, you're making it very easy for him to attack you. So practice this skill of closing down and jockeying. Another important skill for midfielders is long passing. And I'm actually going to show you some clips I did for a video on soccer drills for midfielders. In this row, we're going to do some long passing. And if you only have one ball, find a wall, ping it against that wall, let it bounce back to you. Go again. But if you have a few balls and you want to try and hit it into a net, just get that ball out of your feet, play a driven pass, good technique, into the net. Try to hit the back of the net without the ball bouncing. Okay. So good technique, driven pass, focus on, and if you can, don't just have a dead ball go and hit it because in a match, that's not realistic. You're either coming off a turn or dribble, getting your head up. Good technique, driven pass, let's do better than that. And maybe you missed the net, but you go again. There you go, driven pass. Okay. After you play that, you can run to the other side, get your balls again. So depending on the distance, a little bit of fitness, come, get it out of your feet, driven pass again. And like always, ooh, crossbar, ooh, camera. I'm always playing with both feet. So as I said, it's better for you to practice off a dribble, it's more realistic. Get that ball down, good technique. Playing with both feet, there we go, beautiful. As a defender, it's very important that you're capable and confident with your head and skills. So practicing as a defender, defender specific skills can be tricky, but one thing you can do to practice your head and technique is use a wall. Okay. First, just practice good contact off the forehead, good contact off the forehead, direct it where you want to go. As a defender, a lot of times maybe you're doing a defensive clearance. Okay. So you can practice going up, going high. Okay. But this is a good way to get that technique. Can't be scared of the ball as a defender. Practice good contact off the forehead, snapping with the body. Okay. The more power you want, the more you have to generate from the hips, from the upper body, from the neck, but developing confidence with your heading skills. This is the featured subscriber for this video. If you'd like to be featured in future videos, hit that like button, drop a comment below, and let me know how my content has helped you improve as a player.