The Running Goal Kick

Several years ago, when my daughter's team was playing U6 soccer, I got tired of our goal kicks turning into a scoring opportunity for the other team. We played 3 v 3, and if we sent the other two players forward, the other team more often than not jumped the kick and got a 1 v 1 (or worse) with our player that did the goal kick. The only solution was to get our players out of the mode of "passing" to their teammate and into the mode of trying to kick the ball to the other end of the field. Positioning our players even farther up field was not a solution as the same thing would happen, it would just start farther from the goal.

The solution was a thing we called the "running goal kick". I think it teaches principles that will be important as passing becomes a real option when they get older and it works really well to boot.

On a running goal kick:

1. All 3 players line up side by side with the kicker in between the runners.
2. The kicker targets a gap in the opposition to kick it through. (If they're marking up our two non-kicking players, this becomes real easy.)
3. By aiming at a gap rather than a person, this is good chance for learning to pass the ball to space.
4. Also by aiming at a space, it is also easier to get the player doing the goal kick to look at the ball rather than the target since they're not passing to a person that is probably moving around.
5. As the kicker kicks the ball, the other two players start their runs up field, one on each side.
6. This puts the runners in the correct orientation to keep the ball moving in the right direction (i.e. toward the other team's goal).
7. This has another benefit in that it gets the runners used to moving away from the ball in anticipation of a pass to space.
8. The runners get the ball and keep it moving toward the goal.

This is the "running goal kick".

This same method translates well to kick-ins and kick-offs too. Your starting positions are defensively strong, but your momentum is very offensively oriented. It takes some practice to get the little ones to understand what's going on, but it works much better than sending two-thirds of your team ahead of the ball with 3 hungry opponents ready to jump the kick and score.