---
title: "Jail Break"
description: "Prisoners with a ball each dribble out of the jail past guards who can only move along its edge: pick the side the guards have left open, and break out through a new one every time."
canonical: https://hobbit.football/drills/jail-break
language: en
publisher: Hobbit (https://hobbit.football)
---

# Jail Break

> Prisoners with a ball each dribble out of the jail past guards who can only move along its edge: pick the side the guards have left open, and break out through a new one every time.

U7 to U10 · 8 to 14 players · 23 × 27 m · 10 min

Also called Escape to Victory!.

![Diagram of Jail Break](https://hobbit.football/api/game-library/diagram/jail-break)

## How to play

1. Mark a jail 23 metres wide and 27 long. Split the group in two: the prisoners, each with a ball, inside the jail, and the guards, without a ball, spread around its four sides.
2. Guards stay on the boundary line. They may slide along it and round the corners to block a prisoner, but never step into the jail or chase anyone outside it.
3. A prisoner breaks out by dribbling over the line past the guards. Then they dribble back in anywhere, and the next break-out has to go through a different side.
4. A guard who wins the ball plays it back into the jail, and the prisoner goes after it and tries again.
5. After 60 seconds, prisoners and guards swap. Each prisoner counts their own break-outs and tries to beat that count in their next round. With more than 14 players, mark a second jail.

## The decision it trains

The prisoner has four sides to choose from and a handful of guards who cannot be everywhere. So the head comes up: which side has the biggest gap between two guards, and which guard is busy with another prisoner? A guard can only move along the line, so a prisoner who comes in at an angle makes the guard pick a side, then cuts the other way and accelerates past. Two prisoners going at the same stretch of line at the same time almost always means one of them gets out. After every break-out the side you just used is closed to you, so you turn, look again and choose the next one. The guards decide which prisoner to step towards, and two guards on one side have to split the line between them rather than go for the same player.

## Make it harder or easier

- **Too hard:** move one or two guards over to the prisoners, so every guard has more line to cover.
- **Too easy:** shrink the jail to 18 by 22 metres, so every guard has less line to cover.

## What to ask at the breaks

- "How did you choose the side to break out of?"
- "What did the guard do just before you got past?"
- "Guards: when two prisoners came at your side together, which one did you go for?"

## Where it comes from

Jail Break is in the coaching course manuals of PA West Soccer, the soccer association of western Pennsylvania in the United States: once in the U8 field sessions of its U6/U8 module, and again for U10 in its U10/U12 module, both times on an area of 25 by 30 yards. No source names who created it.

## Documented by

- PA West Soccer (United States): Jail Break
- Ontario Soccer (Canada): Escape to Victory!

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