A player looks to play the ball surrounded by opponents.

Session

Marking and intercepting session: intercept as a team

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Jun 30, 2025

Session intentions

This is week five 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
make informed decisions of when to mark and when to intercept.

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.

Quarter of a pitch

12 players

Goals

Flat cones

Bibs

Intercept as a team

For the escape game, create a 30x20-yard area with multiple gates around the edge of it. Have a few defenders with the rest being attackers. The defenders need to stop players escaping through a gate by tagging them. When they tag their third player, they swap roles with them.
Attackers carry on playing if they’ve been tagged – unless they need to swap roles with a defender. Attackers score a point each time they escape through a gate without being tagged. If they do this ten times, they then become a defender.
Create an 30x20-yard area with end zones and a middle zone. Put a goal at one end. Have a defender in the middle zone, two attackers in one area between zones, and two defenders and one attacker in between the other zones. Attackers try to play through to their teammate who then goes for goal.
The defender in the middle zone is locked in and tries to intercept a pass or tackle an attacker that’s dribbled into their zone. If any defender wins the ball, they break out and try to get the ball into the end zone to score.
Create a 30x20-yard area with end zones for this 5v5 or 6v6 ‘multi-goal footy’ game. Have five goals at one end and three goals at the other. Teams can only have one player in their own end zone. Scoring in the goal that’s guarded is worth three points. Scoring in the others is worth one point.

0/0

Tactics board

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

Make it easier

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

To make this session easier, you could:

have more defenders or fewer gates in the escape game, increasing the likelihood of tagging or intercepting
put an extra player in the middle zone during the second practice
allow multiple defenders into the end zone to defend the goals in the final game.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

give attackers a ball to dribble with during the escape game
make the pitch wider for the second activity
make the goals bigger in the final game.

Coaching points

Remind defenders to position themselves strategically, anticipating the movements of the attackers. They should stay on their toes, ready to react quickly to any changing situations.

Encourage players to react positively when they make an interception by launching a counter-attack if possible.