Session

Moving with the ball and turning session: turning to play forward

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Sep 15, 2025

Session intentions

This is week three of the moving with the ball and turning session programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.

This session will help players:

develop their ability to twist, turn, dodge and weave
work with a teammate to beat defenders
improve decision-making skills when moving with the ball and turning.

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 session 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 and alter training plans accordingly.

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.

40x30-yard pitch

12 players

Mini-goals

Flat cones

Bibs

Turning to play forward

Spiderweb tig: Set up a 30x30-yard area. Choose two players to be taggers and give each a bib (spiderweb). To tag someone, they throw their spiderweb at them. If it connects with a player, the tagger gets a point. The others need to dodge the spiderwebs. The tagger with the most points wins.
Twist and turn: Use the same space and split your group into two teams. Have one start on the outside of the area and one on the inside. Give the outside players a ball each. They pass to a player in the middle without a ball. They turn and move before passing to another outside player.
Twist and turn: Progress this practice by using cones to create different sized gates inside the area. Players on the inside need to control the ball, turn and dribble through a gate before passing the ball to a player on the outside.
End zone game: Place an end zone at each end of your pitch. Have a target player in each end zone. Teams work together to get the ball to their target player to score a point. Play restarts with the other team who try to work the ball to their own target player.
Small-sided game: Finish the session with a small-sided game using the whole pitch and a goal at each end. This gives players the opportunity to put their moving with the ball and turning skills into practice.

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On the pitch

Looking for a bit more detail? Check out this video to see what it can look like on the pitch.

Make it easier

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

To make this session easier for the players, you could:

increase the size of the spiderweb tig area to make it easier for players to twist and turn to avoid being tagged
introduce a ‘magic player’ in the end zone game to give a side an overload
make the end zone game multi-directional, so players can work the ball to either target player.

Make it harder

To make this session harder for the players, you could:

decrease the size of the spiderweb tig area to make it more compact and more difficult to evade being tagged
give one side an overload during the end zone game, making it harder for the underloaded side
make the end zones smaller to make it more challenging to reach the target player.

Coaching points

Ask players to think about how they can beat a defender using their movement or a teammate.

When near a defender, get players to think about taking smaller touches and keeping the ball close to them. When there’s space, encourage players to take bigger touches to drive into the space.

Before receiving, encourage your players to adopt an open body shape to allow them to turn and play forward if they have space.

Ask players to think about how they can use clever, disguised movements to lose a defender. They might move away from the ball to create space for them to drop into, for instance. Or they might move towards the ball to create space in behind for them to spin into.