Soccer Defensive Drills

The attack side may be the glamorous side of soccer but a team is as strong as its defense. The offense can score as many goals but eventually the defense has to step up and stop the opponents from scoring. Good defensive drills should be able to empower the players to use their skills effectively in the real game situation.

Good Defensive Drills

Youth soccer defensive drills are designed to make the players perfect their skills that they need while playing a soccer match. These drills are targeted to improve specific skills such as dribbling, passing, defensing and shooting. Given below u10 are tailor-made for strengthening the defense side of the team. These drills are perfect for both children and teens. To start, you will need certain equipment like cones, ropes and loads of soccer balls.

Perfect Defensive Game Play
You need to divide your team into attackers and the defenders. Make sure that the attackers outnumber the defenders. Create a rectangular boundary within which the players have to play. Each attacker should have the ball, the aim is for the attackers to try to score a goal whereas the defenders have to stop the goals.

Improve Coordination
For this drill, a team of 4 defenders and 6 attackers are required to dribble the ball inside a circle. The defenders aren't allowed to leave the circle. Once a defender gets the ball from an attacker, they switch sides.

One on One
For this defensive drill, the team is divided into pairs of two wherein one is the attacker and the other is a defender. The aim is to prevent the attacker to score and once the defender takes the ball from the attacker, they switch roles. This helps in better understanding of the two sides and it also sharpens the counter attack skills.

Attackers Vs Defenders
This is one of the most effective defensive drills for soccer. For this drill, groups of 4 attackers, 4 defenders are made. The goalkeeper guards the goal while one by one the attackers dribble up and try to score, on the other hand one by one the defense come up to stop the goal. When a goal has been saved, the two change sides. This drill needs to be done at a fast speed.

Accuracy
These drills are relatively simpler and are ideal soccer drills for u8. The main objective is to sharpen the player's accuracy while passing the ball. To perfect this, the team is divided into sets of three where two are offense players and one is the defense, it is the job of the defense to clear the ball away from the offense. Another simple drill is to make the players dribble the ball and pass it amongst themselves to sharpen their accuracy.

Now that you have your hands on these effective drills, go ahead and try them on your team. Your defense side will definitely be in top form and the opposing team won't know what hit them!