Forza Italian Football is pleased to bring its readers a regular new feature – Il Mister. Our experts will endeavour to show you all the methods and tactical secrets employed by Serie A’s best football coaches.
Current AS Monaco coach Claudio Ranieri is one of the most experienced Italian tacticians around, having worked in Italy, England France and Spain.
The Roman, dubbed the ‘Tinkerman’, has had spells with highly illustrious teams such as Juventus, Roma, Inter and Napoli.
In this edition of Il Mister, we will bring you one of his coaching sessions whilst with the Turin giants.
Warm Up – Eight Minutes
Without a ball, the players jog to raise the body temperature before alternating dynamic stretches of both the upper and lower body. This is then followed by various running routines including skipping, jumping, kicking and stretches.
Drill 1 – Fitness, interval running
Players line up in two groups facing the cones and follow the sequence:
• Sprint to first cone (10m)
• Jog backwards to next cone (5m)
• Sprint forward to final cone (10m)
The sequence is then increased so that players complete each ‘run’ more than once before they can rest.
After the single run, their next attempt will be to do it twice before they rest and finally to complete the run three times.
Drill 2 – Technical, keep ball (15 minutes)
Players will form a big circle with three members of the team to remain in the middle.
Those on the outside will play a classic ‘keep ball’ game using only one touch to keep the ball away from the three in the middle who attempt to win the ball back. The three central players are rotated.
Drill 3 – Technical, cross and shoot
This technical drill alternates two elements. The first attempt on goal will be a simple run and shot by the first player in the group that begins inside the centre circle.
After this first attempt, the drill moves to the wide areas where the two players will create a simple one-two pass to then cross a ball into the penalty box.
Whilst the passing is being done out on the wings, the next player from the middle group will be timing his run to meet this eventual cross inside the penalty box.
The drill then continues with a one-two pass and cross from the opposite side and then back to simple run and shot by the next player in the centre circle.
All players rotate so they participate in all the moves.
Drill 4 – Tactical, midfield defensive zonal principles
The midfield quartet faces four attackers and re-creates the expected defensive movements to stop the forwards being able to make a filtering pass between the midfielders.
The pitch is marked into segments to aid understanding of the shape the players should create when defending.
So, when the ball is central (fig – Drill 4) the nearest player puts pressure on the ball and a ‘pyramid’ shape is formed with the other players.
If the ball is played out wide however, the shape then becomes a diagonal line (fig – Drill 4a).
Drill 5 – Themed game (10 minutes)
Two teams (11 a side) face each other on a full size pitch.
The match will be conditioned in some way.
Usually the number of touches allowed is limited (two touch or three touch).
For more tactics and coaching sessions click on the following links to find, Mimmo Di Carlo’s corner kicks, training from Carlo Ancelotti, a pre-season by Vincenzo Montella, and lots more in the Tactics area.
