Passing and Trapping (Receiving) The Ball

As we begin our season, we need to make sure we have the fundamentals in place to play soccer, and it doesn't get any more fundamental than passing the ball to a teammate, and trapping (or receiving) a pass from a teammate. So often a bad pass or bad touch can lose an advantage by either slowing the attack or turning the ball over. We need to be a solid passing and trapping team in order to do anything else.

In this post we'll discuss basic passing and trapping techniques to give the kids an idea of what we're looking for going into the first practice.

8v8 Soccer Positions Explained: Defenders

In our U11 league each team plays with 8 players on the field. The formation that is typically used is a 3-3-1. This means that there are 3 backs (defenders), 3 midfielders and 1 forward (in addition to the goalkeeper). There will be times where we change formation to adjust but let's start with the basic 3-3-1. Here is a basic diagram of what this means:

Click to enlarge

In this post we'll focus on the defense, which means the backs and goalkeeper.