A guest session with the president of a Swedish club
The president of IFK Strömstad ran a session for the squad: ball mastery, scanning the field, passes with a direction to them, and a 6v6 with no conditions at all.
Last weekend the squad trained with a guest: the president of IFK Strömstad, a club from Sweden, who took the session himself.
He started where every session should start and most do not, with ball mastery - not keepie-uppies, but the control that lets a player take a touch without having to look down at her feet. From there the work was about what she sees when her head is up.
The sharpest part of the hour used BlazePod lights: a player scans, reads which colour has come on, and reacts. The girls loved it, and it did in fifteen minutes what a lecture about awareness never does.
Then passing, with one condition - every pass had to go somewhere, not just to someone. That is the difference between keeping the ball and building an attack, and it is the thing the coaches have been asking for all season. He finished it with a 2v2 in which one defender steps out of position, which forces exactly the kind of pass the drill had been teaching.
The session ended with a 6v6, no rules, no conditions, just a game.
A morning like this is worth more than its hour. The girls got to work with a professional from a different football culture, and they heard the same ideas their own coaches teach, in a different voice. The 2023/24 season starts from here.
