A player dribbling with the ball is pressed by two players.

Session

Pressing and covering session: festival week

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Mar 31, 2025

Session intentions

This is week six of the pressing and covering session programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.

This session will help players:

know when and how to press
understand when to apply pressure and when to cover a teammate.

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.

30x50-yard pitch

16 players

Mini-goals

Flat cones

Bibs

Festival week

Create an area with a zone and a goal at each end. Each team has a player in their own defensive zone while the rest are in the middle. Players work together to score but can’t make a backwards pass to a teammate in the middle. But they can pass back to the player in their defensive zone.
Set up a pitch for a 2v2 activity. This is a normal game. The focus is on seeing if players can carry out what they’ve learnt about pressing and covering over the last few weeks.
Create a pitch with a goal at each end and a halfway line. In this 3v3 or 4v4 activity, the side on the ball can move anywhere. But the side without it are locked in whichever half they were in when they lost possession. If they win the ball back, they can then move anywhere to attack and score.

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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:

make the pitches smaller to allow players to press more easily
stop players from making any pass backwards in the final activity, this gives the opposition a better chance to press and win the ball.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

make the pitches bigger to get players thinking about the distances and the decision of when to press and who to cover
allow players to pass backwards to anyone in the final activity, making it harder to press.

Coaching points

Time the games to provide high-intensity and rest periods. As a guide, you could rotate and mix up teams every eight minutes. But if players are engaged and enjoying it, let the games last longer. Change it up quicker if players are getting frustrated. Be aware that two games are 3v3 and one is a 2v2, so you need to work with players to manage the teams.

Ask players to think about their positioning and angle of approach when pressing.

Emphasise the importance of scanning. Players need to scan to see what’s around them.

Ask players to look for opportunities to challenge for the ball. A couple of good triggers are when their opponent puts their head down or takes a poor touch. Then encourage your players to steal the ball to set up an attack.