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I know a lot of people think that working with grown-ups is a lot harder than working with children, because grown-ups already have a formed personality, they have their own experience with the game of soccer and each of them needs to be treated as an individual at all times. For me, soccer drills for young players are a lot harder to apply, because you don't have a lot of options to take in your relationship with them.

With grown-ups, you can base your coaching on a close relationship with them, on severity, professionalism, honor and several other concepts that might or might not work well with a group (still, all these options might be viable). With kids on the other hand, you're basically stuck with providing them with a fun environment to play in. You can't be "hard" on a bunch of kids. Yell at them and they'll leave crying and not come back to training again. It's as simple as that, they're sneaky

So if you're stuck with fun soccer drills, let's make sure you make them really fun, so that your team of youngsters can both enjoy them and learn from them at the same time. Before presenting a few fun soccer drills you could try working with, let me just say that you can't really train "passing", or "shooting" or a single concept with kids. It's not fun to shoot for 30 straight minutes, or practice throw-ins or whatnot.

You need to find soccer drills for your young players that combine these raw concepts, so that they practice them, even if unknowingly.

-Soccer Drills for Young Players - One Versus One Dribbles

The kids will love this one, it's truly a fun soccer drill! Even as small children, when it comes to sports, we're extremely competitive and with a one versus one dribbling drill, you get to put them head to head, competing.

What they compete for is up to you. For example, you could count a score like this: every time the attacking player manages to dribble the defender, he gets a point, but so does the defender if he manages to stop the dribble. Or, you could simply form two goals out of cones, one for each player and the score would be based on whoever crosses the opposing goal line with the ball at his feet.

-Soccer Drills for Young Players - Unbalanced Drills

Unbalanced drills usually refer to 2 versus 1, 3 versus 2, 4 versus 2 or 5 versus 3 group passing. Let's say you have your youngsters playing 4 versus 2, which is the most popular version of the unbalanced group passing drill. Four players form a square of around 20-25 feet and two players form a smaller team in the middle of this square. The four players on the outside have to pass the ball from one another, without moving too far away from their corners, while the two in the middle need to get the ball away from them (touch it).

Additionally, you could ask the passing players to only use 2 or a maximum of 3 touches before the pass, but that's not recommended if the kids you work with are really young. The player who loses the ball will go inside the square, becoming a runner in the team of two and the player who touched the ball earlier will take his place, thus keeping the 4-2 ratio. This fun soccer drill teaches kids several things:

- it's important to work as a group, regardless if you're in the team passing the ball, or in the team that must recover it

- it's important to give precise passes, if you want the player to pass the ball back to you

- sometimes it's important to use first touch passes

- it emphasizes on working in a tight space, which will prove invaluable later on

Provided you make these fun soccer drills actually worth the effort, it's a win win situation: the kids will gladly come to training, knowing that they'll be having loads of fun with their friends and you also get to teach them the basics of passing, receiving and dribbling. Once they get the hang of these soccer fundamentals, you can pass on to headers, shooting and more complex concepts.

Niv Orlian is the author and the owner of a Soccer Fans website that provides information on various topics related to soccer.

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Being a soccer coach shouldn’t have to mean that everything is left on your shoulders and even if you are given a basic guideline of different skills that you need to be teaching your students, you should always be coming up with new and exciting ideas on different things that you can be teaching them.

Students are always eager to learn whether it is mathematics or the great sport of soccer that they are learning more about. You always want to keep things fresh and new, and that means coming up with a fun soccer coaching drill whenever you can.

Use the Internet

If you are looking for a great, fun soccer drill for your team, know that using the Internet is one of the best things that you will ever do. Online you will be able to find a wealth of different online companies offering information, advice, tips, fun soccer drill ideas and so much more, even detailed diagrams on the different ways you can be teaching the players on your team to excel.

Personalize Them

Now once you have a few fun soccer drill ideas that you have taken from the Internet, you want to personalize them. You can do this by playing particular students into the drill in areas where you know that they would do the best.

Mix it Up

Now you want to always keep it mixed up. Give your players some variety so they never get bored. You don’t ever just want to make them do the same fun soccer drill time and time again. Instead you want to give them lots of versatility so maybe at the beginning of every week give them a new drill that they can start trying out and focusing on.

Not only will this keep them from being bored and tired, but as well it will ensure that all of their skills are kept at top notch instead of just focusing on a few in particular continuously.

If you want to have the best all around soccer players, these are things that you need to take very seriously and you are always going to need to put the players on your team first and ensure that they are enjoying themselves and into the game.

Even young players can benefit from basic soccer drills for kids. Early skills like passing and moving the ball and playing as a team can be built by making practice fun. A few starting points to get you on your way include Keep Your Yard Clean, Killer Whale, and Breakaway Shooting Game.

• KEEP YOUR YARD CLEAN: Start with two equal areas of play next to each other, one team in each area. Each player has a ball to start the game at the coach’s whistle. The object of the game is to pass the ball from the player’s own area into the opponent’s area. After three to five minutes, the coach stops the game. The team with the least number of balls in its area wins. This soccer drill for kids teaches the basics of passing.

• KILLER WHALE: Build a large circle with cones. Play with four to 14 dribblers and one or two “killer whales.” Each dribbler gets a ball to dribble around the circle. The killer whales attempt to kick the balls out of the circle and score one point if successful. Keep up the play for about a minute, allowing the dribblers to retrieve their ball and start again if it gets knocked out. At the end of one minute, the killer whale with the most points wins. Be sure each player gets a chance to be a killer whale and a dribbler.

• BREAKAWAY SHOOTING GAME: Arrange two sets of cones facing each other with two cones in a line allowing distance between for dribbling. In between those two sets are two cones perpendicular to the first sets. In between these two cones stands the goalie. On each end are teams wearing colored flags or similar markings (for this example we will use Red team and Blue team). Blue team dribbles first, with a Red goalie in position in the middle and the rest of the red team at the other end facing blue. Blue1 dribbles to the first cone and must shoot before reaching the second. If the goalie saves the ball or the shot goes wide, he keeps the ball and runs to the end of his line, then Blue1 becomes goalie and Red1 steps up to shoot. Play lasts until one team scores 15 points.

Soccer drills for kids should be kept simple, fun and short. As they progress in the skills, more time, higher scoring or more opposing players can be added to increase difficulty.

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