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A player with the ball is challenged by an opponent.
Session

Marking and intercepting session: festival week

Loz Lok, an FA coach development lead, shares a session to challenge 7-11s to showcase their marking and intercepting skills.

This is week six of the marking and intercepting session programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.


This session will help players:

  • become positive and enthusiastic defenders
  • communicate with teammates
  • work on their positioning skills.

 If you're short on time, this structured training programme can be used as it is. Pitch sizes in this programme are shown as how long the pitch is x how wide it is, but these are just suggestions.

 

To make the programme more effective, adapt it to suit your players, your numbers and the space you have. If you want to skip, repeat or amend these sessions – that's fine. It’s up to you how you use this resource.


If you like this idea, download the session plan and give it a go. And don't forget to share your experience on the England Football Community. We'd love to know how you got on.


If you’re coaching U7s, please note that from the 2026-27 season, changes will be made to the formats to improve the experience young players get across the country. Check out the Future Fit digital content hub to find out more.

Session setup

In our example, this is what we’ve used to set up this session. But adapt it to suit your team and the space available to you.

Half

Quarter of a pitch

Player

Ten players

Goal

Goals

Flat

Flat cones

Bib

Bibs

Tactics board

Looking for a bit more detail? Check out Loz's tactics board video for this session.

Using the STEP framework (Youth Sports Trust, 2002) can help keep things fun, engaging, and appropriate.

To make this session easier, you could:

  • allow multiple defenders into the end zone to defend the goals in the ‘multi-goal footy’ game
  • make the 5v5 rivals pitch smaller
  • make a zone smaller for those defenders who need to experience more success during the last game.


To make this session harder, you could:

  • make the goals bigger in the ‘multi-goal footy’ game
  • increase the size of the 5v5 rivals pitch
  • allow the passer to progress into the receiver’s zone during the final activity to create a 2v1.

Coaching points

Emphasise the importance of communicating with teammates. Players need to work together to take up the right positions. This will increase the chances of intercepting and help dictate where attackers can go.


Encourage players to mark opponents closely to give themselves the opportunity to nick the ball if it is played to them.