Receiving and finishing session: festival week

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - May 18, 2026

Session intentions

This is week six of the receiving and finishing to score session programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.

This session will help players:

demonstrate receiving and finishing skills
work effectively as a team
enjoy competitive practices, take ownership, and show respect.

If you're short on time, this programme can be used as it is. But it’s a template you can build on. So, to make the session or programme more effective, adapt it to suit your players and their needs, as well as the numbers and space you have. If you want to skip, repeat or amend individual practices or the whole session – that's fine. It’s up to you how you use this resource.

Any pitch sizes in this programme are shown as how long the pitch is x how wide it is, but these are just suggestions.

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.

If you’re coaching U7s, please note that from the 2026-27 season, changes will be made to the formats to improve the experience young players get across the country. Check out the Future Fit digital content hub to find out more and alter training plans accordingly.

Session setup

Here’s an example setup for this session. But adapt it to suit your team and the space available to you.

Third of a pitch

6-18 players

Mini-goals

Flat cones

Spots/flat markers

Bibs

Festival week

Three-in-a-row: Set up a grid using nine cones. Two teams of three start on the middle cone. When someone shouts “go”, players run to a free cone to try to make a row of three with their teammates. Only one player can be on a cone at a time. The first team to create three-in-a-row wins the round.
Football bingo: Teams play this game across two pitches. Challenge teams to score in nine ways and put them on a whiteboard at the side. If a team scores using that finish or technique, they cross it off the whiteboard. The first team to cross all finishes off – or has the most finishes – wins.
Festival carousel: Use the two pitches for these 3v3 activities. Every four minutes, change either the opponent teams are playing against, or the pitch teams are playing on. Remember to build in breaks after each activity.
On pitch one, teams try to play through the thirds. Players aren’t locked into zones. Playing through all three thirds and scoring is worth three goals. Building from the middle third and scoring is worth two. Winning the ball in the final third and scoring is worth one.
On pitch two, if a player scores, they run to grab a cone from the side and put it next to their goal. The team who conceded can start play straight away to try to take advantage of the overload.

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On the pitch

Wondering what this could look like? Check out the video to see how a coach took this session idea and adapted it for a group of players.

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:

allow teams to complete three finishes that form a line, rather than needing to score with all nine for the whole grid during ‘football bingo’
use bounce players in the festival carousel games to support the team in-possession.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

get players to either dribble with a ball to a cone in ‘three-in-a-row', or be the first team to pass to all of their teammates when they are in a row
challenge teams to counter and score in a set time limit when they win the ball and attack on pitch one of the festival carousel
use a bigger pitch for the second part of the carousel. This means that players have a bigger distance to cover. And after scoring, the overload will last longer as players have further to go to get a cone.