Under 11's - dribbling skills - Monday 1st October - 12 children
Great session tonight, Over the past week I have watched Barcelona on a number of occassions, particularly Lionel Messi, display football of a higher level. Most noticeable is Messi's ability to cause havoc in defences.Interestingly he does it all without any of the conventional Ronaldinho/Ronaldo style tricks, he does it all with dramatic and very fast changes of direction.
Consequently the session centred on the players ability to beat defenders by dramatic changes of direction. The kids loved it, the nature of the drills enabled meaningful and discreet interventions, amazing how breaking down this most profound and basic skill engendered rapid improvement and much deeper understanding. All the drills were contained within games, in some cases there was minimal queing. In this case the queing a maximum of 2 people facilitated the necessary rest periods, due to the high anaerobic content of the individual efforts
The key to the success was ensuring the learning was a natural outcome of the drill rather than an instructed, pre-meditated prescription of specified moves. All the players achieved success, it also aided my analysis of the players development needs, At the start of the session some of the children could not beat a player head on, with discreet intervention it was relatively easy to facilitate success
The kids evaluation at the end of the session suggested we also addressed , closing players down, taking your first touch on the run, The importance of speed and when to dribble and when to pass - More than happy with that
