Soccer Attacking Drill: Attacking from Wide Positions

This soccer-wide attacking drill is an excellent drill for your wide midfield players. It’s a great way to give your right or left midfielders, wingers or wide strikers a lot of the ball, and help them practice playing dangerous balls into the strikers.

You can use this as a crossing drill, where you dictate that the wide players must cross the ball from out wide into the box. Or you could give the wingers more freedom to choose the most dangerous attacking pass.

If you’re struggling to score goals that start from attacking in wide positions on the pitch, this drill is one for you. You’ll need several players to set this one up, and wide players who are confident of getting a lot of the ball.

Equipment needed:

• Approximately 10 soccer balls
• 8 cones

Soccer Drill Attacking from Wide Positions set-up:

• Using one-half of full size pitch, lay down a line of cones from the point where the 18-yard line meets the dead ball line to around 10 yards past the half way line (so you are using approximately 2/3rds of a pitch in both width and length)
• Set up two teams as follows: (the below example is a 4-4-2 formation, this can be changed though to suit the teams preferred formation)
  • Defending team: GK, CB, CB LB, LM, CM, CM, STR
  • Attacking team: RB, CB, RM, CM, CM, STR, STR

Soccer Drill Attacking from Wide Positions execution:

• Start with the ball at the feet of the attacking team CB
• Both teams to play freely, but attacking team must pass the ball to the RM player before scoring

Coaching tips:

• Encourage the RM player to make good decisions when they receive the ball; for example, when is it a good idea to:
  • Attempt to dribble past the full back
  • Cross the ball early or from a deeper position
  • Keep possession by passing backwards
  • Dribbling inside or linking up with CM or STR players
• Encourage the RB to support the RM: when to support in front (overlap/underlapping runs), when to support from behind
• Coach the two strikers and CM movement as they arrive in the penalty area for crosses
  • Getting on blind side or in-between defenders
  • Making well-timed movement across the front of defenders as the cross comes in
  • CM arrive late and in space
• Guide the non-attacking players (such as deep-lying CM) to take up a defensive position in attacking situations to provide protection

Progressions:

• Use different starting points for the drill such as a throw-in deep in the opposition’s half and try to work on creating crossing opportunities from there
• To pose different challenges, ask the defending team to mix up playing a high or low defensive line

Variations:

• Work on defending in wide positions instead