Football Drills

Football Drills

Football drill to practise turning with the ball

It’s impressive when you see footballers receive the ball with their backs to goal and in a quick movement, turn with the ball to either shoot or run at the defence. But you can get your team practising these skills with the help of this football drill.

How to run football drill

  • Using the diagram above, the striker receives the ball, turns to his left (particularly if he is right footed) and moves to the first cone and sprints with the ball to the second cone.
  • You need to get players A and B serving the ball in so he gets used to the ball coming from different angles.
  • A and B – 10 yards apart – serve to the striker.
  • He comes forward collects and turns to his left.
  • Then sprints between two cones – five yards away.
  • The two cones should be no more than three yards apart.

How to advance the drill


Keep the dimensions the same, but tell your striker to turn to his right, using either the outside of his right foot, or even better his left foot – usually his weaker foot – to control turn and sprint through the two cones.

Key football coaching tips

What you want to see is a tight turn so players are under pressure to take good control of the ball. Make sure the players get the ball out of their feet as they turn – it should only take two touches of the ball to turn, then shoot, pass or run with it.

Passing wave and sprinting football warm up drill

This football drill works on the passing ability and co-ordination of your players. They need good reactions and must listen to your explanations of how to play or they will not know what to do. So you can get their attention and keep it because they need to think about what they are doing.

I often use this warm-up drill for training evenings to get young minds fixed on what it is they came to training for… football.

  • Set up an area 40 yards long by 15 yards wide. 
  • You will need two servers, some cones and a number of balls.
  • The first coach passes to the group on his right (1). The player receiving makes a pass to the other team (2) and sprints diagonally to the cone.
  • The opposite receiving player takes one touch and plays a long pass to the other coach (3) and sprints diagonally to the cone.
  • The warm up drill continues until all the players are at the opposite cones.
  • The second coach then restarts the drill in the other direction.
  • Therefore the players move up and down in a wave motion.