Warm up in a way that measurably reduces injuries. Move through the cone course with controlled technique, knees tracking over the toes, then finish with sharp planting and cutting at match speed.
Set two rows of cones about five to six metres apart. Part 1: jog through the course, adding hip out, hip in, circling a partner and controlled shoulder contact. Part 2 is done on the spot (core, balance, plyometrics, including Nordic hamstring work) and is not shown here. Part 3: run at moderate to high speed with bounding and plant-and-cut changes of direction. The full programme takes about twenty minutes and should be done twice a week. On match days, Parts 1 and 3 only. Note this programme is designed for players aged 14 and over; use FIFA 11+ Kids for ages 7 to 13.
Almost nothing in football coaching has been tested in a randomised controlled trial. The FIFA 11+ has been, repeatedly, and the trials report meaningful reductions in injury rates among teams that actually complete it. That evidence base is the reason to run this rather than whatever warm-up the club has always used, and it comes with two conditions that decide whether any of it applies to you.
The first is frequency. The reductions come from using it as the regular warm-up across a season, not from doing it through pre-season and abandoning it in October. Compliance is the single largest variable in the published results, and it is also the one most within a coach's control.
The second is technique, which is where the running and cutting section earns its place. A knee collapsing inward on a landing or a cut is the mechanism behind a large share of non-contact knee injuries, and this part of the programme exists to train the knee to track over the toes under load. Performed at three-quarter effort with sloppy alignment it becomes an ordinary jog, and the protective effect goes with it.
So slow it down and watch the knees rather than the clock. Quality here is not a nice-to-have, it is the entire active ingredient.
One honest note about how it fails. Players find it repetitive and will drift through it unless somebody is watching, which is exactly the failure mode that stops the programme working while everybody still believes they are doing it.
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.