Football Training Tips For Children

I’m the father of eleven year old twin girls and they are, without a doubt, very sporty girls. They literally love every sport and will try any sport.

They are now at an age when they are deciding what sports they want to concentrate more seriously on. My one daughter has decided that gymnastics is her favourite sport, whereas her twin sister absolutely loves football.

She started playing football about three years ago. At the beginning of last season, due to other commitments, I had to find a new football team for her. We did find a team for her but unfortunately they didn’t have a coach so my daughter asked me if I would coach the team. In all honesty, this was not a problem and I was relishing the thought of coaching a football team.

I had a little bit of experience of coaching a girls football team so it was going to be a learning experience for myself, as well as teaching the girls football skills and helping them improve. Once I started watching the girls play in matches and at training, there was instantly many things that stood out. For starters scoring goals, tackling and talking to each other were instantly obvious.

Here are a few football training tips that I have found very useful in improving the girls football skills.

1. Help with shooting and scoring goals

When the girls got in a position to score goals in matches their accuracy was very poor. They would either miss the goals or kick it straight at the goalkeeper so this was something that we needed to work on at training straight away.

How to solve the problem? Well, while I was browsing the internet I came across a football target net. This was absolutely perfect to improve their accuracy when shooting as it has 5 different coloured targets which will help them when shooting at the goal. It’s away from the goalkeeper but still inside the goals. It really is a brilliant way to improve the accuracy of their shooting.

2. Dribbling the ball whilst running at speed

While dribbling the ball I found that the girls would lose control especially if they were running at speed and this consequently would mean giving the ball away to the opposing side.

A great tip to help them with control of the football while running at speed is to set up a course using cones that they are able to zig-zag through and finish with a sprint to a finish line. The rule is the ball must never leave your foot and you must use both feet. If you lose control of the football you go back to the beginning and start again. It’s repeat, repeat again until you get it right.

3. Tackling

Tackling is one of the hardest things to teach children when it comes football. Some children have a natural ability when it comes to tackling, but many children lack confidence when it come to tackling. This is usually fear that they hurt themselves, but here are a couple of tips that will help their confidence and make them realise that if they tackle properly they won’t hurt themselves.

My first tip is to make sure that when an opposing player is coming at them with the ball to make sure they are standing side on to them giving them the ability to move either way quickly. My second tip is to teach to never take their eye off the ball and make a solid contact with ball and you will win the tackle every time.

I found that as the season progressed our training with tackling came to fruition during matches and all girls started to win a vast majority of tackles.

So there are my few football training tips for children. There are of course many more.

Do you coach a children’s football team? I would love to hear your tips in the comments below.