A player passes the ball to a teammate, under pressure from the opposition.

Session

Passing and receiving session: connecting with teammates

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Apr 14, 2025

Session intentions

This is week one of the passing and receiving session programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.

This session will help players:

use scanning movement off the ball to connect with teammates on the ball
make decisions on when and where to pass

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.

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.

60x40-yard pitch

12 players

Goals

Flat cones

Spots/flat markers

Bibs

Connecting with teammates

Create two 10x10-yard grids using nine cones for each one. In each grid, two teams of three start on the middle cone. On “Go”, they run to form a three-in-a-row with their teammates. Teams get a point for successfully doing that. The first team to then do it three times, wins.
Create a circle with a ten-yard radius. Within that, place two small squares down. A goalkeeper stays inside each one. Pair the rest of the players up. Give each pair a ball. Teams look to pass between another pair. If the receiver then plays a first-time pass to the keeper, they earn a point.
Progress this drill by making one of the pairs a pressing team to change this to an opposed practice. If the pressing team win the ball, they become a passing pair, and the team they took the ball from becomes the new pressing team.
Set up 30x20-yard and 30x30-yard pitches. On the smaller pitch use mini-goals. Use bigger goals and keepers on the other pitch. Begin with a matched-up game on each. Players can switch pitches to create overloads. Combine the scores on both pitches to find the winner after four minutes.

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Tactics board

Looking for a bit more detail? Check out Emily'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:

make the circular area bigger
add in a safe space in the circular area for teams to use to avoid interference if needed.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

give teams a football in the arrival activity and challenge them to pass along their three-in-a-line to earn a point
reduce the space to make the circular area smaller.

Coaching points

Look for individual movement off-the-ball to see if players are aligning themselves with their teammate – and communicating with them – to make a connection.

Emphasise the need to align the timing of the pass with the receiver’s movement.

Ask players to think about whether it’s best for the pass to be into the receiver’s feet or played into space.