How many drills are too many? I see coaches, experienced ones, who perform “death by drills.”They search the internet, subscribe to soccer drills generator websites, and have pages and books of drills, ready to do at practices.Almost every practice consists of numerous complicated drills, not one or two, but five or ten or even more. The problem I see is that players participate in these drills and due to the limited amount of time spent on each, master none.Would it make sense to take U8 players and teach them how to score a goal in practice, when they don’t know how to dribble the ball into the goal area?Not really. Until the player can master dribbling with control and around opponents, learning how to score a goal is irrelevant, as he may never reach the goal area. My suggestion is that a coach systematically plans practices so that only one or two things are emphasized.Dribbling with excellent control is the basic of soccer.Teaching young players good dribbling skills is paramount to a well-developed soccer player. Dribbling emphasis points like body balance, controlled touches, proper speed and posture should be taught before goal scoring.Once a player dribbles without having to “think” about the dribble, he/she is ready for the next drill. As a coach of youth soccer, lay out your practices carefully.Think about the sessions you teach and the sequence of instruction.Dribbling, passing, positioning, goal scoring, teach them in those sequences, but not all in one session.You may have to repeat one a few sessions at a time, but till one is mastered in the sequence, the next can’t be learned properly. When you start coaching the higher divisions, say U12 and up (yes, I believe players ages 10 and 11 should be considered in the upper divisions), and you have only coached teams because your child is on the teams, your strategic part of the game may be limited.Fortunately we now have coaches who played the game in their youth.Many however have never seen the pitch from a game situation and are faced with the challenge of teaching a young team the necessities of good soccer. Subscribing to endless sites that include coaches who have been in the professional leagues, either as players or coaches, or perhaps both, the youth coach is bombarded by complicated drills.Subscribing to many of these sites myself, I find that most drills are so complicated that even our High School players have trouble executing them. Whatever drill you as a coach decide to use, be sure that your players are actually enhanced by it. In my opinion, the ultimate soccer player can think quickly on his/her feet, makes decisions that elevates a team’s performance by his/her actions and is driven to excel.The question is how to coach it.How do you create an athlete who does so well that you can stand (or sit) at the touchline without saying a word?How do you motivate players to be team players?What types of practice sessions do you plan? At the U8 level, I try to teach players one small thing additionally at each practice session.One day it may be proper use of the kicking foot, the next proper use of the non-kicking foot, then balanced dribbling, etc., etc.At the higher levels, such as U14, I work each session on making players concentrate and think about different aspects of the game. I am a firm believer that scrimmage type sessions, small sided and larger number sided can teach more about playing the game than many boring drills.I interrupt scrimmages every once in a while to sprinkle in some of the drills and ask them to incorporate them into the subsequent scrimmage. Here is an example: Say all 14 players attend the practice session.After proper dynamic warm-up, I let them kick the balls around a bit.Good additional warm-up and it gives the keeper some warm-up exercise as well. If I decide to do full scrimmage (all players), they are divided into two teams (I don’t always make even numbered teams.In a game you may face stronger teams, so playing against a team with more players is okay at practice.I do try to divide the teams in somewhat equal strength players).I instruct them to use the width of the field and work on building space (not bunch). Those are the basic instructions.The scrimmage game begins. Without stopping the scrimmage every time something isn’t quite right, I will monitor the process.When I see something that needs to be discussed, I do it quickly while the action is still fresh in their mind.An example may be to stop the scrimmage after a forward kicked the ball towards the goal, when another player was better positioned to place the ball in goal if he/she had only made a proper pass. Should the player with the ball score? If he/she can’t, pass it to a player who can score, or if not, find open space to move the ball to, etc. (There are seven steps in decision making for a player with the ball). These are things I want them to always think about when they have the ball. On defense, I will look for players performing the two yard set (taking a stance two yards or so from an approaching player to slow him/her down and await a second defender, after which the ball is taken away). I look for proper movement of the other players as the game moves around the pitch. It’s not often that players execute everything as planned, but the more they are in a scrimmage situation, he more they learn to react to the situation.Then somewhere along, may be ten minutes into a scrimmage I may do a quick drill, perhaps a rotation, overlap or passing drill. Whatever the drill, I ask them to watch for opportunities to incorporate the drill. Whether in scrimmage or in drill, I insist that players who just passed a ball move quickly out of the spot they passed the ball from.It is designed to teach them to always be on the move and keep the opponent off guard.I do this with U8, U14 and High School alike. One drill I do is to have them scatter on the field and start passing a ball.All players must constantly be on the move, and the player who passed the ball must quickly move a minimum of five yards from the spot they passed from.There are many drills that are extremely useful. You must decide which will augment your team’s performance. So my personal message is to go ahead and do those drills you download and learned, but don’t kill them with drills. Sprinkle them in with scrimmage exercises.Scrimmages may be 11 v11, or 1 v 1.An excellent one v one exercise is to place two cones on the pitch, one or two yards apart.Players may score from either side of the goal. There are no boundaries unless they are physical (benches etc.). If players concentrate, they perform offense, defense, dribbling, feigning, and many other things common in the game.If you change this to 2 v 2, passing is introduced.More than 2 v 2 for two sided goals gets too crowded and someone starts to stand around. Remember avoid “death by drills,” by that I mean don’t lose the players’ concentration and performance by boredom.