A player looks to pass the ball past an oncoming opponent.

Session

Passing and receiving session: creating and exploiting space

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - May 6, 2025

Session intentions

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

This session will help players:

combine with teammates, even in tight spaces
work on passing range
understand how use width, depth and height, to create space for individuals to receive.

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

18 players

Goals

Flat cones

Spots/flat markers

Bibs

Creating and exploiting space

Create two 40x30-yard areas with zones at each end and one in the middle. Put a target player in each zone. Have a 2v2 and a 1v1 in between the zones. Attackers combine with target players to get the ball from one end to the other. When the ball is in the 1v1 zone players can join to make it a 2v2.
Target players can pass to each other and players can play back to a target player if they cannot play forward. If the attackers successfully combine to get from one end to the other, they get a point and try to work it back to the other side. If defenders win the ball, they become the attackers.
Create three 30x20-yard parallel pitches with end zones. Have a player in each end zone with a 2v2 in the middle. The aim is the same as the whole part of this practice – to combine with teammates to get the ball from one target player to the other.
Return to the first pitch but remove the end zones and replace them with a goal at each end. The target players at each end are now acting as the last defenders. The attackers combine to get the ball to the middle target player, then look to combine and score in the other half.

0/0

Tactics board

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

add more target players to the ‘whole’ parts of this session
increase the width of the area in the first activity
overload the attacking team in the ‘part’ practice by making it a 2v1 in the middle.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

overload the defending team in the first part of this session
change the area in the first activity to a diamond shape to make it more difficult to create space
make the area smaller in the ‘part’ practice
use goalkeepers in the final practice.

Coaching points

Encourage players to create space through using width, depth and height with your teammates. For instance, if using width wisely in the first activity, it could open up space for the next pass – or for target players to pass to each other.

Look for movement into space to receive and the timing of it.

Observe if players are identifying spaces to exploit and using a varied range of passes to do so.

Get players thinking about two-player and three-player core moves to help them combine with teammates successfully.