How to play
- Mark an area 18 metres wide and 25 metres long. Ten players in pairs; each pair builds its own two small goals from cones, 1 metre wide, anywhere in the area.
- Every pair plays 1v1 at the same time: each player attacks one of the pair's goals and defends the other.
- The other pairs, and their balls, are part of the game: play round them or use them as cover, but only your own goals count.
- The first player to 5 goals ends the round for everyone. Then everyone changes partner and builds new goals in a new place.
The decision it trains
A normal 1v1 asks where the defender is. In traffic, the player on the ball also has to see everything else: another pair crossing their path, a loose ball, a player who can screen the defender. So they keep looking up while they dribble, and choose a route through the gaps or use another game as a wall. The defender chooses when to press and when to let the traffic slow the attacker down.
Make it harder or easier
What to ask at the breaks
"What did you see around you just before you went past your opponent?"
"When another game got in your way, what did you do?"
"How did the two of you choose where to put your goals?"
A free account plans 2 sessions and talks to Hobbit 5 times a month; after that, Pro.
Who documents it
9 sources · each opens the originalThe Italian federation's 2018 exercise book puts it in a section called Calcio di strada (street football) and pictures it as two children at school break, with empty bottles for goals and a sponge ball. Daniele Tacchini, an Italian coach, has the same idea in his collection I 30 giochi più belli, as a variant of a numbers game. No other origin is documented.
Italian FA (FIGC)Italycalls it 1 contro 1 nel traffico
German regional FAs (Bavaria, Hamburg, South Baden)Germany · 11 documentscalls it El Caos, El Chaos, Chaos-Turnier
Football AustraliaAustralia · 2 documents
Danish FA (DBU)Denmark · 2 documents
BC SoccerCanada
Royal Belgian FABelgium
Massachusetts Youth SoccerUnited States · 2 documents
Ontario SoccerCanada · 22 documentscalls it School Yard Soccer
