Locked Where You Lost It

1. Mark a pitch 18 metres wide and 27 long with a halfway line of cones and a mini-goal at each end. Two teams of 3 or 4. With more players, run two or three pitches side by side.
2. The team on the ball may go anywhere.
3. The moment your team loses the ball, every one of you is locked in the half you are standing in. You can move anywhere in that half, but not over the halfway line.
4. Win the ball back and the lock is off: everyone is free to attack again.
5. After a goal, the team that conceded restarts from its own goal. If the ball goes off the side, pass or dribble it back in. Play blocks of 4 to 6 minutes, then change opponents.

When the ball is lost, nobody can sprint back to rescue the others, so each defender has to read their own half. In the half with the ball: can I reach the receiver as the first touch lands? If yes, press. If not, or if nobody is behind me, I stop diving in, slow the attacker down and steer them towards a teammate or the touchline. In the other half the question is which pass I can cut out, because the next pass is coming my way. The team on the ball has its own question: in which half are they short? Count the defenders and attack the half with fewer of them. And where you stand while your team has the ball matters too, because that is where you will be locked if it is lost.