An attacking drill

I was recently invited to observe a training session of the Ajax Under 15s. The event was part of Ajax's outreach and there were about 100 coaches from local teams present, mostly from Ajax's partner clubs. It was nice to see that in terms of timing and content there wasn't much difference between the sessions I run and the sessions the Ajax coaches were delivering. That's not to say there weren't differences, there was a phenomenal attention to detail, an extremely high tempo, and of course the players were of a fantastic quality.

Among the various exericses they put on, two stood out to me, and here's one of them.

Ajax Wave Game

This is a simple wave game. The coach plays a ball to one of the teams, they try and score. The other team tries to take the ball and if successful, they try to score.

If a team scores, they stay on and their opponents are immediately replaced by two new players from the other team.

Done right the tempo becomes very high, most 'games' last less than ten seconds and the exercise is high intensity.

The magic in this drill is in the two players who I've put boxes around. These players are subect to the following constraints.

• They have to stay in the marked area
• They can't score
• They don't swap out when their team concedes

Effectively these players are acting as classic 'target men', the most common way to score in this game is to play the ball in to one of them and make a run so they can lay it off back to you for a tap in. In this way the game generates a good mix of one v one ball skills, passing and movement. I really liked it, and I'll be trying it out with my team this evening.