---
title: "Rainbow Gates"
description: "Every goal starts shut: dribble over a coloured arc to open the mini goal of its colour, or right through the circle in the middle to open them all, and choose the route the defenders have left you."
canonical: https://hobbit.football/drills/rainbow-gates
language: en
publisher: Hobbit (https://hobbit.football)
---

# Rainbow Gates

> Every goal starts shut: dribble over a coloured arc to open the mini goal of its colour, or right through the circle in the middle to open them all, and choose the route the defenders have left you.

U9 to U11 · 8 to 10 players · 20 × 30 m · 15 min

Also called Der Regenbogen-Ritt, Die bunte Burg.

![Diagram of Rainbow Gates](https://hobbit.football/api/game-library/diagram/rainbow-gates)

## How to play

1. Mark a pitch 20 metres wide and 30 long. Put a goal with a keeper in the middle of each end line and a mini goal in each of the four corners, each marked with its own colour.
2. In the centre, mark a circle about 4 metres across: the treasure. About 3 metres out from it, lay four arcs of discs, each one facing a corner and in the colour of that corner's mini goal.
3. Three or four a side plus keepers. Each team attacks the big goal and the two mini goals at the far end. Keepers guard only their big goal. With more than ten players, mark a second pitch.
4. Every goal starts shut. Dribble over an arc and the mini goal it faces opens. Dribble right through the circle and all three goals at the end you attack open. Once a goal is open, anyone in the team may score in it.
5. Open goals stay open until your team loses the ball or scores. After a goal, the keeper restarts and every goal is shut again.

## The decision it trains

Nothing opens until someone dribbles, so the player on the ball reads the defenders before the goals. Is an arc free, or is a defender standing on it? The arcs sit off to the side, are the quicker route and open a small goal with no keeper in it. The circle sits in the middle, where the defenders gather, but one dribble through it opens the whole end, the keeper's goal included. It is a choice between safe and risky, and every chance has to be paid for with a dribble. Once a goal is open, the decision moves to the teammates: get to the side of the open goal for a pass, or pull defenders away from the arc the dribbler is heading for. The defenders choose between guarding the circle and guarding the arcs, and once a goal is open, between blocking it and winning the ball back to shut it.

## Make it harder or easier

- **Too hard:** leave the big goals open from the start, so the arcs and the circle only open the mini goals.
- **Too easy:** turn the arcs round: dribbling over an arc opens the mini goal in the other corner at that end, so the dribble goes one way and the finish the other.
- **Next step:** play the Hamburg sheet's gambler's version. Each arc dribbled over in an attack is worth 1 point and the circle 3, added together when the attack ends in a goal. Lose the ball or miss, and they are gone.

## What to ask at the breaks

- "Which goal did you choose to open, and what made you choose it?"
- "When was the circle worth the risk, and when was an arc better?"
- "When a teammate opened a goal, where did you go?"

## Where it comes from

Der Regenbogen-Ritt ("the rainbow ride") is in the Hamburg FA's training suggestions for E-juniors, its under 11s, in the section on dribbling: two youth goals with keepers, four mini goals, and a circle in the centre with arcs beside it, where an arc opens the mini goal of its colour and the circle, which the sheet calls the rainbow's treasure, opens all the goals. The sheet credits the idea to Federico de la Gama and Robin Janowsky, from the association's 2021 workshop. The same booklet has a close relative, Die bunte Burg ("the colourful castle"), credited to Anoush Faghir Afghani, Özden Kocadal and Maurice Boughal: four goals joined by coloured lines, where dribbling over a line opens the goal of its colour (at a later level it shuts that goal and opens the others), and a dribble through the diamond in the middle opens them all.

## Documented by

- German regional FAs (Bavaria, Hamburg, South Baden) (Germany): Der Regenbogen-Ritt, Die bunte Burg

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