Practicing 3v3 Soccer: Structured Practices

I have six parts to my practices.

1) Dribbling and shooting, our warm-up.
I set up two rows of cones with a goal on each end. The players dribble through the cones and shoot at the goals. For dribbling we do many variations: a) any method, b) right foot only, c) left foot only, d) outside of feet only, e) brushing only, f) backwards, g) over the ball, etc… The key point in dribbling is keeping the ball close. The key point in shooting is looking at your target first before looking down at the ball.

2) Moves
Next I teach 1v1 moves by having them all stand in a line facing me, dribbling across the field and showing the move. I’ve already posted good 1v1 moves, but here are some warm-ups we do.



3) Drills
Here’s where we do simple drills, which I’ll go into more detail in the next post. Some of my favorites are gauntlet, obstacle courses, learning 3v3 plays, and running/throwing/dribbling.

4) 1v1
I make a very small field (like 20 yds x 20 yds), with goals. I throw in a ball, and the players, standing on either side of me, rush in and begin play. The focus is on seeing moves and good defending (no stabbing, but waiting for the player and ball to separate before attacking).

5) Scrimmage, Strategies or Games
Most of the time it is just a 3v3 soccer scrimmage. Before a tournament we focus on plays. For fun days, to change it up, I bring soccer tennis or we play sand soccer (playing on one side of a beach volleyball court), or other games I’ll go into more detail in another post.

6) Sprints - a few sprints after practice. Sometimes I teach proper running techniques, or they wear a harness and pull a weight while running.

As you can tell, my practices can run long, but I keep it fun by bringing many devices that keep practice interesting; the most important of these being goals, backstops and sometimes painting the field.

Having real goals instead of cones or orange flags makes practicing fun. Your players also get used to rebounds off the goal, which doesn’t happen with cones or flags.

A backstop (same as a baseball pitch back), allows players who are waiting in lines or waiting for 1v1 turns to juggle against the backstop. I also use the backstop for chipping over it, wall passes in drills, and a really fun pre-warmup drill for early arriving players, but I'll post that later.

Before tournaments, I come out early and paint actual fields on the grass, painting boxes in front of the goals as well. The fastest way to do this is to already have rope with loops in the correct length. (To make a loop, hold the rope in a loop shape and make a simple overhand knot.) All you need is one side of the field because you duplicate it, and you can use the tiny orange flags from Home Depot to hold the loops in the ground while you spray field paint next to the rope. I do the same with the box, but for circles, I place the end of a looped line in the middle of the circle, held in place by a flag, and with my hand holding the paint can and the rope, I make a circle by keeping the rope tight.

You'll notice I bring other items too, to make my practices fun; but I think that, and trying to teach fancy moves, makes them really like practice. I've often heard new players (who we invited to our practice) tell my players how cool our practices were. One player told me, “I like practicing with you.” A parent told me her son never talked about his other practices, but he always talked about what we did in ours.