Football: Pass and follow - Across the pitch

The ?modern way? is to play out from the back. To be able to do it successfully though, you need your defenders to be comfortable on the ball when looking to pass, dribble and scan the pitch.

3 players stand around 3 metres apart from one another with one ball between them.

They can pass in either direction and should start with two touch football, using strong side footed passes.

After a few minutes you can introduce a one touch rule to encourage players to think about where they are going to pass before they even receive the ball.

Split your players into three equal sized teams, with two teams starting inside the area and the third spread around the outside of the grid.

The team on the outside of the grid are neutral players. When they receive the ball they must pass back to a player on the same team that originally passed to them.

The two teams inside the area play a possession game. The challenge for each team is to score 10 (or more) consecutive passes to score a goal.

Set up a minimum of 4 pairs of cones in a straight line and get players into pairs, with a player from each pair stood behind the starting cones.

In this pairs passing exercise players are only allowed to use straight passes (no diagonal balls).

The first pass is played from player 1 (p1) to player 2 (p2). P1 then runs diagonally across the grid to receive the return pass from p2.

After passing the ball to p1, p2 must also run to the cone diagonally opposite to receive the next pass.

The drill continues in this way until players reach the final cone.

2 players with 1 ball players stand behind their 2 cones.

Players have to take the ball wide of one of the cones to then try and score a goal by passing the ball through the 2 cones of the other player who on receiving the ball takes it wide of the their cones to pass the ball back.