Use of Soccer Shooting Drills

Soccer is a game of individual skills that is then integrated into a team strategy. Coaches have to be the providers of the strategy, but it should be up to each individual player to master his or her skills.

With soccer shooting drills, you could be talking about individual skills or strategy drills. Shooting is the glamor skill of soccer and every player should be an excellent shooter. But there are many elements to shooting that can be broken down into individual skills that must be mastered before moving on to more complex drills.

For instance, the top players can use the many different quadrants of the ball to create many different shots. There are slicing shots, David Beckham benders, Cristiano Ronaldo knuckleballs and many more. Every player has his or her particular strengths and weaknesses. For instance, some players are not planting their non-shooting foot properly and need to drill that.

As a coach you need to ensure that fundamental shooting technique is mastered before moving on to the fancy shots. Kids always want to imitate the fancy shots of their heroes, and they're all going to want to learn how to make it bend like Beckham as soon as possible. That's just fine, but you as a coach should be ensuring that they are doing the fundamentals correctly before working on the trick shots.

The simpler soccer shooting drills will be best for determining how much work each of your players needs on his or her shooting. For instance, have your players each take a ball and line up at midfield. You stand at the 18 yard mark and have them one at a time pass the ball to you, come running at you as you pass the ball back either left or right, and have them shoot. This drill is very simple, but poses weaknesses in many potential areas and will allow you to see close-up where your shooter needs practice.