Move the ball first time under real time pressure. Pass and follow immediately, arrive at the open corner before the next ball comes, and keep the quality up as the space shrinks.
Make a square about nine metres a side, roughly half the base version, with a cone at each corner. Three players on three corners, one left open. Pass along an edge and follow your pass immediately to the open corner. One touch wherever possible; if a player needs two, widen the square slightly rather than letting the quality drop. Change direction every couple of minutes so both feet work.
Same pattern, less grass, and it becomes a different exercise. Shrinking the area is the cleanest progression available to a coach, because it adds difficulty without adding a rule to remember, and it produces the change automatically rather than through instruction. Nobody has to be told to play one touch in a space where a second touch is visibly too slow.
That is worth understanding as a general tool. Most drills have a difficulty dial that is not a new condition, and area size is usually it. A pattern that has become comfortable does not need a defender added or a rule imposed; it needs ten feet taken off each side, and then the same pattern starts asking real questions.
What specifically changes here is the timing of the run. In a large area a player can set off slightly late and still arrive, because the ball has a long way to travel. In a tight one the ball arrives almost immediately, so the run must begin as the pass is struck and not a moment after. The tolerance that hid the fault has been removed.
The body shape becomes non-negotiable for the same reason. Receiving square in a big grid costs a touch. Receiving square here means the ball is lost, because a defender's worth of time pressure has been created by the walls of the area rather than by an opponent.
Expect quality to drop when you first shrink it, and hold your nerve. A pattern that was tidy and is now scruffy is a pattern that has started to demand something, and reverting to the larger area at the first sign of mess wastes the progression.
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.