Attacking Overloads Session Plan
This week’s session plan is focused on attacking overloads & combination play.
The session was conducted with boys and girls in the early high school age group. (2009s, 2010s)
Ever component of the session led into gameplay with numbers up in attack at all times.
This is a 90 minute session designed to focus on three essential components: technical, tactical, competition.
The technical segment of the session involved zero contact exercises with a high volume of repetition and touches. On the ball work starts Early and in the warm-up by graduating from dynamic stretching right into getting players on the ball half with the ball half without the ball and just getting them moving in space. While they are dribbling, we as coaches call out different exercise movements like turn or takeover.
Technical: High volume of repetition on basic combination play
Setup: 20 × 20 square with one cone in the middle of the square
Positioning: All soccer balls in one corner, 2-3 players at each corner
Instruction: play a square pass to your teammate, teammate takes the ball on the dribble attacking center cone, first passer makes overlapping run, player on the dribble lays the ball off, overlapping player plays the pass straight ahead and stays at that cone. Player passing the overlapping pass continues diagonally to the next cone.
I found an excellent and short video that is a perfect representation of this exercise. During our session, I evolved this exercise using the same set up to focus on giving go.
Tactical
Setup: Half of half field long ways with two goals. Soccer balls at midfield with coach
Positioning: three attackers who will stay on, two defenders on either side
Instruction: coach will play the ball into the attacking group attacking group attacks one goal when the ball goes out or there’s a goal scored. They immediately look for a ball from Coach and turn and attack the other side the defenders who are just on step off and once the ball is dead on the other side, the attackers turn and attack the other goal and the other defenders rotate. I recommend 5 to 10 repetitions depending on the intensity level at age before rotating the midfielders out.
One specific thing I added to this session was the requirement of a combination play like a given go or an overlap before they were permitted to go to goal. I also purposefully did not have goalkeepers in this portion of the session because the emphasis was on attacking with numbers and combining more than anything else.
Here is a helpful resource to illustrate this exercise:
Competition
Set up: half field with goalkeepers goals at midfield in the end line.
Positioning: retain the same teams from the previous exercise. Identify two players who are always in attack so that the attacking team is always in a numerical advantage to bring the session home and get as many opportunities to attack with numbers as possible in a competitive setting.
Instruction: use the extra player or two who are always in attack to support creating combination place to goal with a numerical advantage in attack over defense. Coach to spacing and off the ball running and emphasize the use of these midfielders in transition.