You can never work on dribbling and passing too much. No matter what level you are coaching, the ability to control the ball is paramount to your team’s success and players need to continue sharpen these skills.
While you, no doubt, have many different warm-up and ball control drills that you currently utilize, its always good to add some variety. Below is a ball control/warm-up drill called the Arsenal Warm-up provided by RLFA Reserveline Football Academy.
The drill is easily adaptable. You can add a multitude of ball handling moves and/or passing combinations to tailor the drill to your needs or talent level. You might also implement this drill,or a version of it, to simply add variety to your training sessions.
The YouTube video below has sound, so please make sure that you sound is turned on and that you have access to the site. (Some schools block access to YouTube)
The Arsenal Warm-up Drill is executed utilizing a four cones placed in a square approximately 8-10 yds apart. For maximum touches, use just six players and two balls. This eliminates in standing around. Simply create multiple boxes to accommodate your full squad. If space is tight, the drill will work with more than 6 players.
The drill begins with one player dribbling towards the cone to his right and simply passing the ball to his teammate when he arrives. That player then dribbles to his right and passes the ball to his teammate. The players continue in this pattern as they move around the box.
The next step in the progression is that the coach will call out a move that is to be made at the halfway point between the cones. This is the point where you can obviously add a lot of variety.
After executing several moves (for example scissors, maradona etc..) in the middle, the coach progresses to passing the ball. First he uses two touches to pass the ball around the grid. Players will follow their pass. Next the players pass, receive a return pass and then beat the defender, in this case the cone, with a combo pass. The third passing combination is as follows. First player passes to the second player who returns it to the first. The first player now passes diagonally to the third player who returns it to the second player. The second player then passes to the fourth player. These passes are all one touch.
Using a little imagination you could create and endless variety of combinations in this drill.