Train circulation when the middle of the area is blocked. Players have to work around and between five obstacles, using short combinations to move the ball and occasional long passes to reach the far side.
Set five mannequins in a cross, three in a line with one either side of the centre, in an area about sixteen metres square. Six players circulate the ball around the four arms, using one-twos to move it on and looking for the longer ball across the shape when it is available. There is no set order. Two touch, and keep the ball out of the blocked centre. Change direction regularly.
Most passing grids are perimeter exercises. Players stand around the edge, the ball goes round, and the middle of the area is empty and irrelevant. It flows nicely and it never asks anybody to solve a blocked centre, which is the situation an actual midfield spends most of its time in.
A cross of five mannequins inverts that. The middle is the busiest part of the area and the edges are open, so the ball has to be worked around four arms with no clean line through the centre. There is no perimeter route that avoids the problem, which is the important difference from a grid with obstacles dotted about in it.
What this produces, once players stop fighting it, is a natural mix of short combinations and long switches. The one-twos are for moving the ball on when the next arm is blocked, and the eleven metre ball across the whole shape is the reward for someone spotting that the far quadrant is completely free. Both appear in the animation and both are worth naming, because groups tend to find one and ignore the other.
The recurring positional error is standing behind an arm of the cross. In a shape like this a player can be entirely invisible while feeling well positioned, because he is only a metre from the ball and cannot be passed to at all. Stepping into the adjacent quadrant instead of hovering on the line is the correction, and it usually needs saying more than once.
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.