By the time children reach seven, if they have played previously, they will start to engage in more challenging practices preparing them for match situations.
Football training for seven-year-olds works best when the drills are fun and introduce various skills and techniques almost without the children realising it – if they’re having fun, they are much more likely to learn. With this in mind, here are some football training ideas for seven-year-olds.
Warmup: Hopscotch
Hopscotch is one of the best ways to work on much-needed agility, balance, and coordination skills. Between the ages of seven and nine, children tend to struggle more with these skills due to the ways in which their bodies are growing and developing. That makes it imperative that they work on these areas to ensure that they don’t lose any of the agility that they’ve built up at a younger age.
You can even get players involved as they can help you design the Hopscotch and draw it out. It’s important to encourage decision-making in players and make them feel important and fully engaged in the activity.
The warm-up is designed to get the blood flowing and the body ready for exercise, whilst having fun and building on fundamental skills.
Striking the ball into an empty goal
At the age of seven, chances are that most children dream of being the next Cristiano Ronaldo, the next Lionel Messi or the next Neymar. Basically, they want to score goals. You can use their thirst for goals to your advantage by taking it and teaching them the correct way to strike a ball from a relatively early age.
How to Set Up the Drill
Striking the ball successfully is a complex skill to master and this is only done through repetition, remember “practice makes permanent”. Players will need to think about how they set up their shot, which part of the foot they are using, which part of the ball they are striking, what is going on with their knees, where the standing foot is, what they are doing with their arms and how they are following through! This is a long list and understandably makes it one of the most difficult football skills to master.
How to Carry Out the Drill
You can start by working on the basics – namely striking with the laces and using the follow-through to generate power. By spending five to 10 minutes a session striking balls into an empty goal, children will develop these skills while at the same time getting the feeling of success that comes with the ball hitting the back of the net.
It’s best to give them challenges to keep the player engaged, this can be done by setting a timer, adding bibs, or a cup in the goal which they should try and hit. It could also become a competition in which you/the coach and the player take it in turns shooting into the goal. Seven-year-olds can be extremely difficult to keep engaged, so ensure the practice is fun and varied.
Benefits of the Drill
If they see a successful outcome from what they are being taught, then they are far more likely to retain and remember the skills needed. This is particularly vital when it comes to striking a ball as although in this instance the aim is to score, the correct technique is important all over the pitch.
Defending in tight spaces
By the age of seven, children will begin to develop a competitive streak and you can use that to your advantage to teach them the art of defending. As we’ve already noted with the last drill, at this stage in their development most children will dream of being the goal-scoring hero as opposed to the game-saving defender at the other end.
That can mean that they don’t focus on defensive skills until later in their footballing lives. This is a mistake as good defensive skills are needed all over the pitch, especially in an era when pressing from the front is popular.
How To Set Up and Carry Out the Drill
Split the training group into pairs and put them into small zones where one child has the ball with the objective of beating the other by keeping the football for 1 minute. If the defender wins the ball, they must dribble it to one of the corners in their zone and stop the ball, After this, they must give it back to the attacking player and start again.
Challenge defenders to win the ball as many times as possible. Having an enclosed space should make it easier for the defender to have a few “wins”. Get every player to keep track of their points as this plays on their competitive nature.
Remember to switch roles in the group at the end of each minute. After both players have had a go, switch the pairs so they play against a new teammate.
Football training for seven-year-olds needs to be engaging and facilitate the maximum amount of playing time possible. These training ideas cover both defending and attacking. For more training opportunities, why not try one of our weekly football sessions in which we develop all areas of a player’s game?
