Small-sided games

Organisation

• Simple‑to‑organise warm‑up activity to raise the heart rate and promote working as a team
• Tag game starting with an individual tagger, then moving on to a competition between two teams
• If a player is tagged, he or she has to stand still and balance on one leg; he or she can be released by being touched by a team‑mate
• Encourage players to balance on both the right and left leg
• Time each team of taggers to see how long it takes them to freeze the other team; the fastest team wins!

Ways to make the exercise easier

• Require the taggers to move with a ball at their feet

 Ways to make the exercise harder

• Require players to move by skipping/jumping/hopping, etc.
• Require the players to dribble a ball while running
• Do not allow players to be freed by a team-mate once they have been caught

Great questions to ask the children

• Can you show me ways to change direction to avoid the tagger(s)?
• How do you know where the tagger(s) is/are?
• How can you be clever to avoid being tagged? Show me

Safety tips

• Make sure taggers tag the body, not the head

Organisation

• Create mini‑pitches for 2v2
• Ask the players to pick their own team‑mate to start with
• Play mini‑matches for two or three minutes
• After every game, the winning players choose a new partner from another winning team and losing players do the same. Then the pairs have to find a new pitch and play again
• Players earn two points for every match they win

Ways to make the exercise easier

• Make the goals larger

Ways to make the exercise harder

• Make the goals smaller or require a target to be hit to score
• Limit the number of touches

Great questions to ask the children

• Can you show me how you dribble the ball past a player?
• Can you think of a great dribbler and try to copy them?
• Who are you marking when you don't have the ball?

Safety tips

• Create a safe zone between the mini‑pitches 

Organisation

• Organise mini-matches of 3v3 on multiple pitches
• Assign pairs randomly to encourage mixing
• Before you start the game, give pairs two minutes to discuss which communication skills they will use to work well together
• Play short matches of 3v3 and create a competition where each team will play each other
• Encourage the players to use different communication techniques (e.g. shouting or waving their arms)

Ways to make the exercise easier

• Larger goals or targets to score in

Ways to make the exercise harder

• Smaller goals or targets to hit

Great questions to ask the players

• What would happen if teams did not communicate with each other during the game?
• What kinds of verbal communication (ways of talking) did you observe people using? What kinds of non-verbal communication (body language) did you observe?

Safety tips

• Create a safe zone between each pitch