With every player turning up to the session it was going to be a busy night!  First was a dribbling session along a set of cones laid out in a T shape.  We were looking for close control, using both feet and different parts of the feet.  When the players thought that was too easy, which they did, we progressed to a game of ‘follow my leader’ through the same set of cones.  We worked with 2, then 3 and finally 4 at a time.  With so many players in such a tight area the balls started to fly all over and the players realised it wasn’t as simple as they originally thought!

We progressed this on to 2 players with one ball going again through the same T shaped pattern.  But this time the player at the front stopped the ball at the last cone and became a defender, whilst the player behind attack the goal at the far end of the court.  We got the attacker to immediately go at pace and not wait for the defender to get set.  The defender had to be very observant and react quickly to what the attacker did.  This was progressed to 2v1 in a similar set up and finally 2v2 with one of the defenders setting off before both attackers.  Even though we had no goal keeper, some of the players tried to beat the defenders at least five times before shooting – the best futsal players only need half a chance to take a shot!

Click here to see more images from tonight’s futsal session.

We played a full court match after with some restrictions.  At first, when in possession of the ball, you only had 3 passes to get out of your own half, but you could have as many as possible when in the opposition’s half.  We wanted the players to get the ball forward as quickly as possible.  We talked with the players about how leaving a couple of players high up the court would help in this situation.

We next reversed the restrictions so you had only 5 seconds to score when in the opposition’s half.  One brilliant point that happened was if nothing was on and a chance could not be created within the 5 seconds the players recycled the ball back into their own half and started again.  Absolutely brilliant to see and not coached – the boys thought this themselves!

Coach Chris was again very impressed by the way the boys and girls played tonight.  Some of the players had taken on board the advice from the previous weeks about how futsal differs from football, really great to watch.