Passing football drills, page 4

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.

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.

Five mannequins in a cross closes the middle and leaves four quadrants. There is no perimeter to circle, so every pass has to find a gap.

The same travelling pair structure run at eight metres rather than three. Two gates give the longer pass something to be measured against.

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

Out from behind the pole, a driven ball across to the far arm, and the ball carried home. The simplest Y, and the one every other variation builds on.

Five metres of width means a two touch player has to control and pass along the same line the ball arrived on. There is nowhere sideways to escape to.

The shape stays fixed and the people in it never do, so nobody can pass from memory. Looking up to find the player rather than the position is the entire exercise.

Short passes on one side, then an eight metre ball through the line, then short passes on the other. The set-up passes are what make the penetrating one possible.

Three exchanges per corner, then the work moves on. The repetition is deliberate: a player gets an immediate second and third go at the same pass.

Long side, quick one-two, long side. The rhythm never varies, which is exactly what lets you insist every single return is played first time.

The same pattern three times over with the roles shifted, so nobody becomes the specialist finisher and everyone performs every job.

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.

Sixteen metres through a four and a half metre gap. Aiming at the gate rather than the player is the adjustment that makes this pass repeatable.

Young defenders lose the ball playing out because of one habit: receiving square-on. This practice fixes the body shape before the pass arrives.

A Y passing drill with an overlapping third-man run: lay-off, ball up to the arm, overlap the pivot and get played in first time on the far side.

Seven players on a small triangle inside a big one: two first time 1-2s with the inner players on the run, then pass to the next cone and follow.

One ball on a circuit teaches an order. Two balls half a lap apart teach players to know their next pass before the current one arrives, which is the actual skill.