Trouble Dribbling a Soccer Ball?

Teaching Games for Understanding

      When teaching children the game of soccer they may have many difficulties if you are to throw them into an "adult" style of soccer game, being the type of soccer we are used to on a large field. Children will run into many tactical problems including: spacial awareness, offense vs defense, speed, agility, footwork/dribbling, and ball possession. I am going to use the TGFU model to assist in the demonstration of footwork and dribbling. You can do this with each tactical problem until the students are able to fully understand the concept of soccer and all the strategies that go along with it. Here are a few games that you can use to assist children in footwork and dribbling:

Red Light - Green Light

     Allow the space to be big enough that there is enough room but not too big that there is an issue with spacial awareness. As the children become better with this game and are able to understand it more, you may spread it out and make the space larger to make it a little bit more difficult for them. 

     The only equipment needed is soccer balls but you may include cones later on to again increase the difficulty level. The teacher will yell out RED LIGHT in which the player will have to stop the soccer ball immediately by placing their foot on top of the soccer ball. When GREEN LIGHT is yelled out, they would have to begin running with the soccer ball and dribbling it through the open space.  To mix it up you can set up cones and have the players run around the cones, this will have them controlling their dribbles to avoid hitting them. You can also incorporate YELLOW LIGHT which will have them dribbling slower than the green light and using more technique.

Get Outta Here

     With this game you also only want to use as much space as necessary according to the number of children involved. You want to set this game up in a soccer-like formation but a much smaller version with the gym lines indicating where the playing field is "out" and two cones on either end that indicate each team's goal.

     You start by splitting the children up into two teams just like in a game of soccer. The instructor will stand on the sideline approximately centered between the two goals (as indicated by the yellow dot). One team will stand to the teachers right, the other to the left. The teacher is to kick the ball into the center of the field, in play, and yell GET OUTTA HERE and one member from each team is to run out and try and gain possession of the ball, dribbling it to the end necessary and shooting in order to obtain a goal. To make it more difficult and high paced you can have both the full teams (or half teams) going at a time. 

Make sure the children are able to have fun as well as understand the game you are trying to teach. This will make for a better game play as well as assisting them with the skills and tactical problem solutions that they will need for future soccer games!