1v1 Skills & Ball Mastery

It's vitally important for all young players to be as comfortable as possible in 1v1 situations with both feet. Players should be encouraged to use changes of direction and pace to throw their opponent off balance, whilst being comfortable with close control of the football. Giving your players lots of touches in training, their own football for large parts of the session and plenty of 1v1 practice will be good ways to help develop these skills.

We've compiled a few simple warm ups and games that allow your players to practice their 1v1 skills, as well as a page of YouTube videos from various sources that cover the key tricks your players can learn to help them unlock a defence!

Skills & Tricks Videos

We've compiled a series of links to YouTube videos from various people demonstrating the most common skills and tricks. These are tricks that young players love to learn and help develop their creativity and ability to beat a player. If they can master them, they can be very effective in game situations (and great fun too!)

1v1 Corridor Practice

This is a very simple warm up that allows everyone to practice their 1v1 skills repeatedly and get plenty of touches. You can change the size of the corridor each pair of players gets to work in to allow for age / ability or even mix the sizes up and rotate the players between them to give them plenty of variation.

1v1 Strength Battle

This practice is great fun, involves plenty of shooting, has a competitive edge and gets your players using their strength and skill to try and beat their opponent. With defending and goalkeeping also thrown in, there is plenty of benefit to an exercise like this.

Skills Corridor

This was a exercise I first saw on the FA Youth Module courses and it works really well for young players, with everyone getting lots of touches, lots of opportunities to try different skills, improving “ball mastery”, whilst also dealing with the traffic of other players. It also allows you to introduce passing, shooting and defending as progressions if you want.

1v1 Defending Practice

This practice focuses on defending and is featured in our "Defending 1v1 / 2v2 / Matched Up" section as well. It's a great way to introduce 1v1 defensive skills, whilst also giving the attacking player problems to solve. A good warm up or introduction for younger players whilst being a great session for reminding more experienced players of the core skills involved in defending 1v1.