Wednesday 11 May 2022, 13:00

Train like a pro with the FIFA Training Centre: numerical advantage and disadvantage

Do you spend Sunday afternoons playing football with your children in the garden? Maybe you are a passionate educator who dedicates all your free time to coaching kids at your local club? Do you jump for joy when they score a goal or master a particular skill and swell with pride when you see them progress? If so, then the new series of FIFA.com articles and resources from the FIFA Training Centre are tailor-made for you.

The FIFA Training Centre (FTC), which launched last November, contains a wealth of technical information, analysis and resources designed by renowned experts and coaches, available to all football enthusiasts. If, despite your best intentions, you sometimes find yourself lacking the requisite knowledge or imagination to make your sessions as exciting as they are useful for the development of your budding champions, then you will find what you are looking for in the "Practice" section, thanks to numerous videos and descriptions of training sessions, all focused on developing individual skills or tactical mastery. In the section entitled "The game", you will find a whole host of analysis and resources developed by sports experts which will help you get a more in-depth understanding of the game, while the "Environment" section tells you more about how to create a more high-performance environment in football. In "Match library", you can watch hundreds of videos from FIFA tournaments arranged by specific moments within matches, with options to refine the filters based on the coach’s requirements. After the first two parts of this series were dedicated to the 4 to 8-year-old category, we invite you to discover the sessions adapted for children aged 8-12. As you will see in the following video, each exercise will enable you to achieve the two goals that coaches the world over, regardless of their level, aspire to: to make progress and have fun.

Over to you: numerical advantage and disadvantage

As well as a demonstration video, each basic football section within the FTC gives tips for warming up, ideas on how to make the exercise more or less difficult, more entertaining or competitive, as well as essential safety instructions. Today’s exercise will give you some ideas to help your players adapt when they find themselves at a numerical advantage or disadvantage during a game. A team of five players must pass the ball between them, with one defender trying to intercept the passes. After a set number of successful passes – it is up to you to decide how many – another defender is added until both groups have the same number of players. Obviously, the exercise can be done multiple ways, for example using hands, feet or head, allowing you to decide on whatever is most useful – and fun – for your players!

Hungry for more...

If this presentation has given you ideas for your next training session, then feel free to explore the treasure trove of videos and advice at your disposal in the FTC. Whatever the age category, and whatever aspect of the game you want to improve, you are bound to find the right exercise for your needs. The entire "Practice" section is available HERE. To learn all about the FIFA Training Centre, click HERE.