Train combination play in a congested area and the close-range finish at the end of it. Every pass is under six metres, so the exercise is about angles and timing rather than passing range.
Set four mannequins in a diamond at the edge of the box, with a full goal and keeper. Work the ball through the diamond using short passes only, including two one-twos, before finishing from around fourteen metres. No pass in the sequence should exceed about six metres. Run several balls in rotation so a new sequence starts as the last shot goes in, and mirror the pattern so both sides of the diamond get used.
Attacking practices usually reach the box with a long ball. Something is played over or through, a striker runs on, and the finishing happens. That covers one way of arriving, and it ignores the other, which is grinding through a crowded area in three or four metre passes because there is no long ball available.
This pattern removes the long option entirely. The diamond of mannequins occupies the space where a penetrating pass would go, so the only route is around and between them in short exchanges. Two one-twos inside ten metres is a genuinely demanding sequence, and it fails immediately if anybody's angle is even slightly wrong, because there is no room to compensate.
That is what makes the support positions the real subject. A player showing behind a mannequin might as well not be there, and in a diamond this tight the difference between available and invisible is under a metre. Players learn quickly that they have to show at the corners, and that they have to keep adjusting, because the corner that was open two passes ago has been closed by the ball moving.
The finish is from around fourteen metres, which is close enough that the keeper is a real factor and far enough that placement matters. Taking it early is the instruction that needs repeating: after a sequence of careful short passes, players want one more touch to be certain, and that touch is precisely the moment the keeper has been waiting for.
Save it to your private drills, then change the animation, adjust positions, swap equipment, or drop it into a session block. Or start from a blank pitch and build your own.