Do you have a child that wants to learn how to play soccer? Or maybe you are a parent coach who wants to know what skills the players should learn first? In this article I will outline 3 basic soccer skills that is absolutely fundamental and that I mean is a very good place to start.
With beginning soccer players, it might be tempting to start practicing transitions, defensive organization, pressing or other more complex concepts. In my mind this is a mistake. It is important to build a good foundation first with the most basic of skills.
Remember that everything the players learn in soccer, will be built upon these fundamental skills. As a simple example you can think of a team that has an excellent plan for getting into scoring positions. For this plan to be well executed the players first needs to know how to kick a ball. Without this ability, there will not be many goals.
Basic Soccer Skill #1: Dribbling
Dribbling can be described as having control of the ball while transporting it from one place to another. This is the most basic interaction to have on a soccer field. The player does not have to interact with anyone else. It is just the player and the ball.
To develop this skill in young (and very young) players, you should encourage them to play a lot with the ball. Luckily playing is something that comes natural for a child. To encourage players on your team to play as much as they can with the ball, it is really important that you as a coach make sure that you have enough balls so that every player has one each in practice.
If you are a coach that is just starting with a group of young players, dribbling should be your main focus. I would go as far as recommending that almost all of your non-game activity should be based around dribbling for the first 6 months of training.
Dribbling training plan – an example
Typically the youngest players train for one hour, once or twice a week. I would structure every training the first 6 months this way:
- 10 minutes warm up. Can be any physical activity as long as it is fun for the kids. Remember that there are other physical skills that players will have good use for later, both in soccer and in life. Use the warm up to practice some of these. Examples can be coordination games, balance games, running games, etc. As long as it is fun and has physical element, it is fine.
- 20 minutes dribbling. This should be structured as a fun activity where every player is both challenged and can succeed. Usually 20 minutes is too long for the youngsters to keep focus, so i would break it up into two 10 minute parts.
- 30 minutes of playing soccer. This is what they really like to do. Make sure that you don’t have a lot of players on each team because it will lead to a lot of players getting few touches on the ball. It is not good for their development to stand in the corner and watch their team mates play soccer. The ideal number of players on each team is two.
An important side note: make sure to vary the activities you use from training to training. Using the same activities every training will result in bored players. Having 3 or 4 different training plans and alter between these you should be good.
If you follow this plan for the first 6 months the kids will have a solid foundation for expanding into the last two basic soccer skills.
Basic Soccer Skill #2: Kicking/Shooting/passing
You might consider shooting and passing two different skills. For beginners, it is just kicking the ball aiming to hit something. If this is a goal or another player does not matter. Sure, when the players gets older, and acquire specific techniques for passing and shooting they can be considered different, but for beginners it is the same.
Some readers may wonder why kicking a ball is not first on this list. The reason is quite simple. When shooting or passing, a player needs to interact with his surroundings in some way. Maybe he has to look at the goal before shooting? Or maybe he has to find out where his team mate is? In other words, some kind of information-gathering and communication is involved which make it a more complex skill to learn.
Often you will see young players kicking the ball with their toe. This is natural. You should probably just let them do this for a while before adjusting. It is really important with young players that they feel like the training is, at least somewhat, on their terms.
Basic Soccer Skill #3: Receiving
It is really tempting to combine passing and receiving for a coach. In my opinion it is better to first focus on the passing, and only give feedback to players on passing, before moving on to receiving. Why? There are two reasons:
- It is easier for young players to get feedback on one thing at a time.
- You as a coach can be much clearer on how you want it if there is only one thing you want to communicate.
Receiving can be done in many different ways. There is receiving when the ball is passed on the ground or in the air. There is receiving with the inside of the foot or the outside or maybe with a different body part. For a coach it is important to find the balance of being specific while at the same time letting the kids explore for themselves.
Conclusion
Now you know what the 3 most important basic soccer skills are! You should use a lot of time as a beginning soccer player developing these 3 skills, and in my opinion this is everything you need in the beginning.
When you move past the fundamental skills and start playing matches, you might want to check out my post on the best 5v5 soccer formations and/or 7v7 soccer formations.
Also, I recommend buying a book on youth soccer coaching. This one is a bit basic, but that is often what you need as an introduction as a new coach.
