Coaching Plan - For Soccer Shooting

Here is my advise for shooting pratice, Always try and get players to hit the target, you only get minimal chances in a game to score, you should try make all their attempts count at training. If they miss the target get them to do 20-50 pushups or other tiring punishments. You will find after doing a few sets of these they will concentrate more on their shooting. After they are confortable with shooting get another player a defender to put pressure on them while they shoot, this will get them used to match situations. Get them practicing all senarios (ontside the box, inside the box, Ball coming at them on the ground, in the air) It hard to describe specific exersices in a forum, but let me now, I have some basic ones that you may already now. I will try email them if you wish.

Try to get your strikers and or attacking midfielders in the penalty area with 2 goals, i normal and 1 smaller both with goalkeepers in. Get 4 players on the corners of the area to feed a ball in at random with the 4 players in the box continually on the move reacting to the ball and finishing on target. You can limit the touches to 2 or even 1 touch and eventually remove the smaller goal which makes the drill more game specific. You can advance in many ways by adding defender(s) or playing the ball in the air or using the weaker foot or stipulating that the striker must take 2 touches etc......
Hope this makes sense and helps

Sorry but do not do that!
When they do vollys etc the chances if football isn't their number one sport is that they will miss. By them doing press ups after each shot they will lose interest and become demotivated. Picture it yourself, your a 17 year old centre forward whose job it is to score. You miss a couple and do some press ups and then become slightly disheartend, carry on like that and they will start to think they are rubbish if you punish them for missing.
This will also reflect upon them in games, would you think that they will want to shoot if they don't believe they can score?

I know what you are trying to say mate but look at it, they are intermediate and practising a skill. Press ups for coming last in a race by all means but not for that sort of practise.

My best advice for you is to have a broken down attacking game, you need 8 players - 1 goal keeper, 3 defenders, 3 attackers and one who will always been on the attacking side so when it starts it will be 4 attackers v 3 defenders.

Use a full size penalty area to start with and some 5aside goals. An attacking player starts on the edge of the area and plays it to another attacker, it doesn't have to be his feet - remember its a game situation. The rest of that drill is easy and its all about movement.

To develop it more put them in posistions ie. if you play a 4-4-2 system in a game then use the wingers actually on the wing, use your feeder who starts off the movement as a midfielder, use your real goal keeper in goals etc. To make sure that they stick to their places you can mark out zones where they can't cross out of so for example the right winger can't go across to the left wing and cramb the box.

This drill is incredibley easy to adapt and develop, happy coaching.

Well thanks for your opinion but I have been coaching at elite youth level for the last 4 year.

I have found this method gets the players concentrating on hitting the target rather than just blazing shots at the goal. Before using this method the team I was coaching were wasting many chances in front of goals, we practiced for large ammounts of time in front of goal and it did not help. I introduced this method after a very qualified and extremely well respected former international youth coach suggested it to me. We kepped shooting practice to about 10-15 minutes a training session and players practice a variety of shoting drills in a short ammount of time, they had about 3-5 chances at goal on each attempt. What it did was simulate a game situation were the players only get a small ammount of chances each game. After a few sessions our goal scoring really improved and we were starting to make half chances count, which really makes a difference in a football game.

I suggested to the author of this thread because he was coaching 17-19 year olds. I would not recommend it to players just starting out. Considering they are 17-19 and are at intermediate level they already would have the correct techniques needed for shooting, it would now be the perfect age for them to start making there shots count and my idea mentioned in the previous post, worked for me. So don't knock it unless you have tried it.

Well i beat you by a year in experiance mon ami.

When they are at that age and at an intermediate level they will be able to hit the target by just taking a shot from any where on the pitch which is the impression I got from your original post. I did that for about 2 years as a player at 16 and that did nothing for me and my team, when i changed teams with different coaches the shooting training was a lot different, it involved more complex training and got superb results not only for individual effots but as a team building up play. Thats why you will need to make it more advanced for their needs and put it into a game situation like I suggested. In a game situation you will not have time to wait for somebody who missed to target to do 20-30 press-ups. It will bore the rest of the group and put the person who took the shot under pressure and like I said, deter them from shooting.

You need to look at the area of finishing to which you wish to work on:
1. Shooting when through on goal
2. Shooting from crosses
3. Type of finish (header, volley)
4. first time finish
5. long shots

Repition of technique in first un-opposed situations, then with slight pressure and then full pressure should develop techniques. You should also try to implement your pattern of play through the finishing work you do. Ie, no point doing finishing from crosses if you play with a dimond in midfield.

Matt Edwards
Southampton FC