Before we get into the best soccer drills for beginners, know that no player ever made progress on their own.
There’s only so much you can do by watching videos. What I’m saying, in essence, is that you should sign up to join a team with a coach who knows what they’re doing.
Also, every coach has their own idea of how to train beginners, which means there are several beginner drills for newbie players.
In the following sections, you will learn about ten of the best and most popular ones to familiarize yourself with soccer!
10 Best Soccer Drills for Beginners
Here are the ten best soccer drills for beginners.
Dribble Line – Alternating Feet
Running, trapping, kicking, and dribbling – these are the four pillars of soccer. Whatever you do as a soccer player hinges on one or a combination of these actions.
Dribbling is one key pillar you cannot fail to master, hence the reason for so many dribbling drills existing.
One of them is the dribble line, in which you need 8-10 cones, each about a yard apart. Weave your way through the cones using the inside of both feet. Repeat as many times as you want to for total ball control mastery.
Juggle in Place With Bounce
Juggling a soccer ball is a great way to master trapping, which is a pivotal skill in ball control. The easiest way to juggle a soccer ball as a beginner, is to juggle it in place as it bounces.
Flick the ball, let it bounce, kick it up, let it bounce, and repeat the process. From there, you’ll be able to kick the ball multiple times like an expert juggler.
Square Dribble – Right Foot
To perform the square dribble drill, take four cones and set them in a square. Each cone should be between four to five yards apart.
Start the drill from the right side of the square and with your right foot, dribble forward. Stop the ball with the sole of your right foot and roll it sideways to the left side of the square, then stop it.
Pull the ball backward with your right sole, then roll the ball sideways to the starting cone with the sole of your left foot.
Square Dribble – Left Foot
To perform this drill, just alternate your foot to the left. Set up your square grid with cones that are four to five yards apart like with the right foot, and then start at the bottom of your square.
This time around, you start from the left side of your square so that moving up the square with your left foot and rolling it sideways will be easier to accomplish.
AJAX Dribble – Alternating Sole Rolls
“AJAX” here just means a criss-cross movement. This is because you’re dribbling from one side of a grid to another diagonally.
For this drill, you need 12 cones – six each of two different colors. Line two differently-colored cones about six to seven feet opposite each other. On either side, line five cones within a feet of each other.
Then, using both your feet, dribble from one end to the other, alternating from one color to another by sole-rolling the ball.
2 Touch Wall Ball – Alternating Instep
Accurate passing is a hard skill to master and that is why soccer legends like Andrea Pirlo, Juan Roman Riquelme and so many others are held in high esteem.
They honed the craft of being able to thread a pass through the eye of a needle to their teammates. The 2-touch wall ball is a great way to begin mastering this skill.
Using two touches and alternating instep, pass to and receive the ball from a wall between two cones.
1 Touch Technique – Alternating Instep
In ball sports, the give-and-go is an underrated move that can open up defenses and create offensive plays from nothing.
A perfectly executed give-and-go requires two teammates to exchange passes with their first touch, with the second teammate playing the ball into space for the first teammate to pick up and get going.
A great way to learn the give and go is the 1-touch wall ball. Using one touch and alternating instep, pass the ball between the two cones.
Directional First Touch – Right Foot
This drill helps you with your change of direction. If you don’t understand yet why you need to be able to change directions with a soccer ball, here’s why: There are at least three players in your way at any given time and maneuvering around them is key to success in soccer. Train your direction change skill with your right foot using this drill.
Pass the ball between cones to a wall, then, with your first touch, move the ball towards any direction using your right foot. Repeat this often.
Directional First Touch – Left Foot
Do this drill just like I described above, but this time, change directions with your left foot. One thing you need to note, however, is that ambipedal players are a rare phenomenon in soccer, so you can rest assured if one leg is stronger than the other.
This drill just helps you train both feet in the event that you are stuck on your least favored side, needing an escape.
Directional First Touch – Alternating Feet
Do this drill just as described above. In case you have no wall to practice with, you can try trapping and changing direction.
To do this, flick the ball into the air and then control it in a way that the ball points away from where you’re facing.
What this does for you is that it helps you change directions quickly when you receive a pass that comes from above. Practice this drill with both feet until you master it.
Final thoughts
And there you have it – the ten best soccer drills for beginners! It is a good thing that these are drills that can be done on your own but remember that your progress needs a mentor.
This means you need a team that can help you get on the right track and show you some more drills that will help you get better.
You can consider the ten drills above to be foundational because they train you in the key pillars: running, trapping, kicking, and dribbling.
