Pressing and covering session: games week

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Mar 30, 2026

Session intentions

This is week six of the press and cover to defend programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.

This session will help players:

develop pressing skills
work on covering skills
learn how to help start counter-attacks.

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.

50x30-yard pitch

13 players

Mini-goals

Flat cones

Spots/flat markers

Bibs

Week six: games week

Small-sided games: Set up a small, medium, and large pitches. Add safe zones on two pitches. Players can be pressed here but not tackled. Challenge one team to start by passing to the other team. As soon as they pass, they must rush to press high, while their teammate offers good cover.
Ensure players rotate around the pitches so they play on each one. And, if you and the players want to, progress the games by removing all of the safe zones.

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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, you could:

remove the safe zones so that defending players can press at any time
make the pitches smaller so there’s less space for defending players to cover.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

use overloads to make it more challenging for teams to press when they’re underloaded
put footballs around the pitches for quick restarts. When the ball goes out, the attacking team can restart with any of the footballs, meaning defenders have to react quickly.

Coaching points

Ask your players to think about their position so that they are ready to press the ball.

Encourage players to stay on their feet where possible. Challenge them to win the ball cleanly and start a counter-attack.

Get players to think about their positioning. Have they got the distance right between themselves, their teammates, and the opposition? They need to have the right distance to offer good covering support but also be in a position where they could engage the opponent.

Encourage your players to look for triggers to press. If the opponent is facing their own goal, takes a heavy touch, or is going to receive a longer, slower, pass, players should try to press. It can help force their opponent backwards or help them win the ball back.

Encourage players to think about how they press. They need to decelerate when approaching someone, rather than just running at them. So, they need to slow down, be side-on, and bend their knees to stay down when close to an opponent.