Cross to the Penalty Spot for a First-Time Volley

This is a volley drill wearing a crossing drill's clothes, and treating it as the latter wastes it. The delivery should be near enough identical every repetition, firm and flat to the penalty spot, because the point is not to practise varied service. It is to give a striker forty attempts at the same difficult contact so the body shape becomes automatic.

That body shape is the whole exercise. Squaring up to a ball crossing your body means the hips are facing the delivery rather than the goal, and the strike either slices wide or is scooped over. Turning side on, with the front shoulder pointing where the shot is going, lets the leg swing across the ball and keep it down. Almost every ballooned volley from a cross is a hips problem rather than a technique problem.

Getting into position early is what makes the shape possible. A striker still moving towards the ball at contact cannot set anything, and a volley taken while stretching goes wherever the ball happens to deflect. Arriving a fraction early and adjusting with small steps is the version that produces a clean strike, which is the opposite instruction from most attacking-header coaching and worth stating clearly.

Keeping it low is a matter of contact point and knee position. Knee over the ball, contact at or slightly above centre. Under it, the ball climbs.

Expect a low success rate. A first-time volley from a moving cross is one of the hardest finishes in the game, and a fifty percent hit rate in this drill would be excellent.