At the recent NorCal Premier coaching symposium, coaches from the Inter Milan academy demonstrated a progression of rondos and positional game play activities. The 5v5+2 bumper game caught my interest – I have used similar activities in both grassroots and high school teams that I’ve worked with.
Here is a video of the players executing the activity:
https://vimeo.com/346306042/3df2b7bc40
During my interactions with grassroots and younger age group coaches, I often get a sense that the training sessions and activities implemented by elite teams are somehow mysterious and complicated. This particular activity captures the simplicity of the game and the ability to develop behaviors through the conditioning of the rules.
Here is the activity plan for this session that I put together using Academy Soccer Coach:
I plan to add this to one of our 7v7 practices in the next few weeks. I’m interested to see the solutions that our 8- and 9-year olds come up with.