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Three Football Drills For 10-Year-Olds

We Make Footballers
31 March 2022

At the age of 10, players won’t be that far away from taking part in proper games which require a lot of focus and learning how to play in a team, whilst still standing out as an individual footballer.

In order to prepare them for that, these football training ideas for 10-year-olds encourage children to be creative and make their own choices when playing whilst being mindful of the teammates they are playing with.

Left or right pass

How To Set Up The Drill

Left or right combines elements of dribbling, passing and shooting – all with some decision-making thrown in. Set up a goal and have a cone on the left and a cone on the right, some distance away. One player stands on each of these cones with their back to goal. Place another cone more central and still further up the pitch from the left and right positions.

How To Carry out the Drill

One player will then dribble the ball towards the cone furthest out. Once they reach it, they have to make a decision as to where to pass – left or right. When they’ve made their choice, they call left or right before playing a through pass into the path of their chosen option. At the point at which they’ve made the call, the player who is on the relevant side spins around the cone behind them, runs onto the through ball and then takes a shot at goal.

Benefits of This Drill

With two choices but no defenders to worry about, this practice introduces choice to a child with a decision having to be made while they are on the move. It also introduces the value of weighting a through ball correctly and allows the children on the cones to practice striking the ball correctly, a necessity when it comes to first time shooting.

Wide crosses

Before the age of 10, most children’s sole aim when they have a football is to head straight for the goal. Wide crosses is a game that will teach them the benefits of finding space and getting the ball wide, showing the value of making a decision to get the ball into the open.

How To Carry Out The Drill

Wide crosses is a simple enough concept. You take a normal football pitch but cone off a channel down either flank. In order for a goal to count, the ball has to go down one of the flanks and be delivered from it.

Players can choose to go down either side and it doesn’t matter where the cross comes from. They can get to the by-line if they like or try and play an early ball in from a deep position.\

Another way to run this practice is by allowing a point to be scored for a normal goal but three points for one that has been provided from wide area. This challenges the players as they will need to score the maximum amount of points in the allocated time for the practice.

Benefits of This Drill

Many children of this age will never have worked on crossing before, so it’s a good introduction to an important skill – especially if you can encourage them to try and play lofted balls into the box.

Corner kicks

One of the easiest ways to introduce the importance of good decision making to children is through practicing corners. This gives them lots of freedom and opportunity to practice defending and attacking.

How To Carry Out The Drill

Have three players start 15 yards out from goal in a close group. They’ve got a decision to make – one has to attack the near post, one has to attack the goalkeeper and one has to attack the far post. Another group of three players also have decisions to make as defenders – namely, who is going to mark each of the attacking players?

Quick Tip:

Before running the drill, explain the benefits of ensuring that the defenders are picking up attackers of a similar height to them. Try and encourage the attackers to time their runs as this will make the difficult to mark and allow them to connect with the ball once delivered with more power and accuracy.

Final Thoughts

These are all simple for effective football training ideas for 10 year olds which aim to increase their opportunities to make decisions in match realistic situations. It’s important to always look at how a player is developing individually and as part of the team, these practices enable you to offer individual feedback.

We Make Footballers provide weekly football training to players of all abilities which can improve their decision making process and confidence in football, try one of our sessions today!