The main challenge after 4 years coaching is to create engaging and at the same time productive drills. For me the basic thing to be a good team is passing and to have good passing, we need to be extremely confident trapping the ball and conducting it without having to look down all the time.
With that on mind, first I did a sequence of drills where the players have to “comb” the ball and speeding up with the ball as close as to your feet. We only have more two practices and I know nobody will learn anything new but with practice we can improve and we MUST improve. Unfortunately we had only one hour of practice so I could not spend too much time on that.
After this drill, was about passing, sprinting and trapping the ball, calculating the steps so you would not lose speed. Then came the fun drill. I moved the small goals to the field and they became “defenders”. I would pass (then later Inês), close to the defender and the players had, with one simple touch, take it off the “defender” and with two more touches, shot at a goal with a very narrow space. The dribble was great, most of the players managed to do but the shot at goal was a disaster. I think only one or two players got the shot perfectly.
To close the practice, we had a different scrimmage. Considering I did not have Bella, Suh-Young and Tehillah (all sick) The ball must be on the ground at all times and we could only score goals in the SMALL box so passing was key. If the ball was two palm of ground, would be a free kick. I have to say that Inês suffered a bit on that. 🙂 I felt it was EXTREMELY productive, forcing us to really focus on passing constantly. My dream is to have our team passing like the Spanish National Team where they have almost 80% of the ball possession. We have the basic skills. Now we need to have the nerves of steel and confidence to do it.
On the worrisome note, seems that Kyra still is not 100% of her left leg. I’ve notice on her shots that was not full power. Hope it’s nothing serious. Anyway, two more practices to the last tournament ever in China and probably my last tournament as a coach too. Time to face other challenges in life and sincerely, after those four years coaching the perfect team, what else could I coach?