A player dribbles with the ball while being pressed.

Session

Pressing and covering session: practising the press

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Feb 24, 2025

Session intentions

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

This session will help players:

think about when and how to press
work with teammates to press and cover
improve their ability to challenge.

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 whole programme 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

Practising the press

Create two 20x15-yard corridors with a safe zone at each end and two defenders in the middle. The rest start at one end and try to dribble to the other. If successful, they exit the area and go back to the start. If a defender steals a ball, they try to get to a safe zone with it to score a point.
Create two 20x15-yard areas with a halfway line. Split players into two teams. Pair them up with an opponent so everyone’s in a 1v1. Each team has a half as their stadium. One player in each pair starts with a ball. Players need to keep it in their own stadium to win a point. Rounds last 45 seconds.
Create parallel pitches appropriate for the age and stage of your players. Put a goal at each end. Players take part in a normal small-sided game on each pitch for ten minutes. Encourage players to look for opportunities to press and steal the ball.

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Tactics board

Looking for a bit more detail? Check out James'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 corridor wider in the bulldog game
make the stadiums smaller to make it easier for opponents to press and win the ball
introduce 2v1s in the stadium game to make it easier for players to press
Introduce a rule in the final practice where players have to stay on the ball for a certain amount of time or take so many touches before passing. This loses some realism from the game but gives players a better chance to press and win the ball back.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

make the corridor narrower in the bulldog game
have more defenders in the bulldog game
make the stadiums bigger so players have more distance to cover when pressing
introduce a rule in the final practice where five passes equal a goal. This makes it more urgent for players to press.

Coaching points

Get players to think about how their body positioning can help them win the ball. If they position themselves side on, and stay low, they can better react to the movements of the player on the ball.

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.

Encourage your players to steal the ball to set up an attack.