For any college soccer team to be successful, they must train and practice every single day. If you are a college soccer coach you may be looking for some new drills that your team can use during practice. During the course of a soccer game there are a lot of two on one situations. Surprisingly, many of these two on one situations do not result in a goal. The reason for this is that the attacking players fail to keep their composure in a game situation. The best way to practice two on one situations is by doing a drill that is called “Keep Composure.” This college soccer drill will give your players a chance to practice two on one situations so that they are prepared for game day.
For this drill you should place two cones twenty yards apart from each other on the midfield line. Next, you should split your team up into two groups. The first group should contain your attacking players or strikers and your second group should consist of only defensive players. After that, you should split up your attacking players into two equally sized groups. Each one of these groups should be assigned to a cone that you previously placed down at midfield. They should line up behind either cone and face the goal. After you have completed that step, tell your defensive players to line up on the end line next to one of the posts of the goal. The last part of setting up this college soccer drill is to distribute your soccer balls to your defensive players. Each defensive player should have one ball.
This college soccer drill begins with the defensive player serving the ball in the air to one of the attacking players. The fact of the matter is that it does not matter which attacking player the ball is served to. Once the defensive player has served the ball to the attacking player they should immediately sprint out to meet the attacking players and defend against their attack. As you can see, this sets up a two against one situation. That is, two attackers against one defensive player as well as a goalkeeper. In this type of situation, the attacking players should score a goal the majority of the time. The reason as to why some players fail to score a goal is that they fail to keep composure.
You should instruct your players about the proper way to approach a two against one situation. The player with the ball should dribble with the ball towards the goal until the defensive player commits towards them. At this point, the player with the ball should lay the ball off with a through ball to the other attacking player. The reason for this is that the other attacking player will be wide open. This drill will be extremely difficult for your defenders to handle, but just tell them to do their best as this is what would happen in a game situation.
During the course of this entire drill communication between the goalkeeper and defender will prevent a goal. Your goalkeeper might be able to cut off the through ball if they are actively paying attention to what is going on in the play. The fact of the matter is that your goalkeeper may not be able to save the ball in this type of a situation. By communicating with the defender the goalkeeper is significantly increasing his chance of making an extraordinary save. By incorporating this drill into your daily practice you will be able to win all of your games when the NCAA College Soccer season rolls around come the fall.
