No Back Pass

1. Mark a pitch 20 metres wide and 25 long with a mini goal on each end line and a zone 4 metres deep in front of each goal. Two teams of four. With more players, run two pitches side by side.
2. Each team puts one player in the zone in front of its own goal. That player stays in the zone, and nobody else may go into either zone. The other three play in the middle.
3. In the middle, no pass may go backwards to a teammate. Sideways is fine. The only backward pass allowed is to your own zone player; any other one gives the ball to the other team where it was played.
4. Score by shooting from the middle into the other team's goal. After a goal, the team that conceded restarts with its zone player. When the ball goes off the side, pass or dribble it back in.
5. Change zone players after every goal. Play 6 minute games, then change opponents.

The rule makes the press readable. The team on the ball can only go forward, sideways, or all the way back to its zone player, so the pressing team does not have to guard everything. It has three jobs and three players to share them: the nearest one shuts the forward pass, the next one covers the sideways pass, and whoever is furthest forward stands in the line back to the zone player. Deciding who does which, without a word from the coach, is the game. The team on the ball learns the other half: with nobody to lay it back to, a player has to look before the ball arrives and know whether they can turn, carry it forward, or must find the zone player before the pressure lands. A receiver facing their own goal with no back pass is the moment to press hard.