Passing football drills, page 2

One wall pass gains ten yards. The skill this drill trains is linking three or four of them to travel forty and arrive at the byline.

Passing across a pentagon is harder than passing around it. The ball travels further, arrives at an angle, and the body must open.

Eight stations, two balls kept on opposite sides. A ten metre transfer, a short set, then another transfer, with no pause to watch your own pass.

Fifteen seconds is the realistic budget for explaining anything to seven-year-olds. Pairs and one ball is what fits inside it.

Two runs at once removes a defender's ability to be right. He is not reading the play any more, he is picking a lane and hoping.

Variation 5 of the Y passing pattern: the pivot opens out one way, sells that pass, then reverses the ball across his body to the opposite arm.

Pass and move is the most repeated instruction in football and the vaguest. Following your pass gives the movement a destination.

Weight is the only quality of a pass that depends on somebody else. Into the path, the right weight is set by how fast the runner is going.

The second one-two is much harder than the first, and not because of fitness. You arrive at the next defender already travelling.

Height is what kills a switch. A defensive block needs about two seconds to shift across, and a hanging diagonal hands it every one of them.

A four metre set, then a ten metre ball across the diamond, sixteen times without the alternation breaking. Every player takes the third man role in turn.

One ball, ten players, and a thirty seven metre strip. Long transfer, short combination, long transfer, until everybody has touched it before the session starts.

Most warm-up passing grooves one distance. This one alternates a driven switch with short one-touch exchanges, so the weight of the pass changes every few seconds.

Variation 5 of the triangle passing drill: three players advance in three lanes, each running behind the man he passes to, weaving up and back.

Hit it badly and it comes back badly. A rebound board is a self-correcting weight trainer, which is the one thing a coach cannot be.

Diagonal passes cross the receiver's body, which is why they are harder. Here the ball also advances, so nobody receives standing still.

Information decays. The picture a player took a second ago is already wrong, which is why good players scan twice and play what is free now.

Defenders track the ball and the man they can see. The third man is the one they cannot, which is why the pattern beats a set block.