How to Coach Ball Striking Technique

Your winger cuts inside, twenty yards out, all that work to make the chance. Then the shot balloons over the bar off the wrong part of the boot and the goal kick is being taken before he has finished his follow-through.

Ball striking is the most visible technique in football and one of the least coached. We run finishing drills that assume clean contact, passing practices that assume a firm strike, and crossing sessions that assume whip and accuracy. When the contact is not there, none of it works, and no tactical plan survives a team that cannot strike a ball properly.

The encouraging part: striking is one of the most coachable techniques in the game, because the mechanics are visible, the feedback is instant and the fix usually lives in one of three places. This guide covers those mechanics, the contact surfaces, and how to build the repetition volume that actually changes technique.

What good ball striking actually is

Ball striking is the ability to send the ball where you intend, at the speed you intend, with the flight you intend, using the right part of the foot for the job. It covers far more than shooting. A driven 40-yard switch, a whipped cross, a firm ten-yard pass and a dipping volley are all strikes, and they share the same foundations.

Why it matters is simple arithmetic. Almost everything a player does with the ball beyond a short pass depends on strike quality, so a small improvement in contact upgrades passing range, crossing, shooting, clearances and set pieces all at once. Few coaching investments pay off in as many places.

It also matters because striking is the technique fatigue attacks first. The player whose contact is clean in the warm-up but wild in the 80th minute has not lost ability, he has lost mechanics. Coaching striking properly means building technique that survives tiredness, not technique that only exists fresh.

The principles

1. The plant foot decides the strike. Most miskicks are diagnosed at the wrong end of the body. The standing foot placed too far from the ball drags the strike wide, too far behind it sends the shot skywards, and toes pointing away from the target send the ball there instead. Coach the plant foot beside the ball, toes at the target, knee slightly bent, with the head steady and the chest over the ball for a low strike. Fix the plant foot and half your team's striking problems disappear.

2. Choose the surface for the job. The laces give power and a clean, heavy strike for shots, drives and clearances. The instep, the curved inside of the foot, gives placement, curl and the whipped flight for crosses and bent finishes. The outside of the boot gives disguise and late movement for the players ready for it. Players should know which surface they are using before the ball arrives, because a strike with no chosen surface becomes a toe-poke under pressure.

3. Strike through the ball, not across it. The follow-through tells you everything. A leg that swings through the ball towards the target produces a true, repeatable flight. A leg that cuts across the ball produces curl, which is a tool when chosen and a fault when accidental. Teach through-the-ball as the default and across-the-ball as a deliberate variation, and watch the follow-through, because players who fall away sideways are cutting across contact without knowing it.

4. Volume changes technique, coaching points alone do not. A player needs hundreds of strikes for a cue like plant foot at the target to become automatic, and a session where each player waits in a queue for ninety seconds between kicks delivers a couple of dozen. Design for repetitions: every pair a ball, servers instead of lines, strikes into nets or back to partners rather than one ball fetched from a hedge. The coach who doubles the rep count has done more for striking than any speech.

What the best teams do

James Ward-Prowse built a Premier League career on dead-ball striking, and the origin story is pure repetition: years of staying behind after training at Southampton to hit free kick after free kick against a wall of mannequins. The technique people call natural is a rep count, and his mechanics are a textbook for principle one, plant foot planted firm, body wrapped over the ball, follow-through straight down the line of the shot.

Kevin De Bruyne shows the same foundations across every distance. Watch his crossing and switching: the surface changes between laces and instep depending on the flight he wants, but the plant foot and the strike through the ball barely vary. That consistency is why his 50-yard diagonal and his cut-back arrive with the same reliability.

At club level, look at how elite academies structure technical work: short, high-frequency striking blocks inside sessions, every player with a ball or a partner, and technique revisited weekly for years rather than covered once a season. Repetition is treated as the programme, not the warm-up. That structure, more than any drill, is the thing worth copying.

How to coach it: a session progression

The progression below is built from drills in our Drill Library, and the design rule throughout is rep volume: small groups, plenty of balls, nobody standing still.

Start with the surfaces. The Instep and Laces Shooting Technique practice isolates the two contact surfaces that carry most of the game. Run it in small groups with a ball each and coach one thing per round: plant foot beside the ball, then head and chest over it, then the follow-through to the target. Ask players to call their surface before they strike, because naming the choice builds the habit of making one.

Then stretch the distance. The Long Passing and Switching Play practice applies the same mechanics to the driven and lofted balls that change games. The coaching points shift with the flight: contact below the middle of the ball with a longer follow-through for the lofted switch, contact through the middle with the body over it for the flat drive. Work both feet, and treat the weaker foot as a rep target rather than an apology.

Add power with accuracy. The Long Range Strike Practice is where laces striking gets tested honestly, because from 25 yards every flaw in the plant foot and follow-through is magnified. Keep the queue short and the ball supply constant, and coach the approach angle: a slightly angled run-up lets the hips open and the leg swing through. Reward clean strikes that miss ahead of scuffed ones that sneak in, because you are coaching contact, not luck.

Finish under fatigue and pressure. The Sharp Shooting under Pressure practice puts strikes at the end of movement, with defenders closing and legs heavy, which is exactly where matches are decided. Run it late in the session on purpose. The coaching point is ruthless simplification: when tired, shorten the backswing, stay over the ball, hit through it. For the movement and decisions that come before the strike, pair this with our guide on How to Coach Shooting and Finishing.

Three mistakes that kill ball striking

One ball, twelve players, one net. The classic shooting drill is a queue with occasional football attached. Each player gets four strikes in twenty minutes and improves at nothing. The fix costs nothing: more balls, smaller groups, strikes both ways between partners, and a target that returns the ball quickly.

Coaching the outcome instead of the contact. Shouting hit the target tells the player what he already knows. Useful feedback names the cause: your plant foot was behind the ball, you cut across it, your head came up early. Watch the feet and the follow-through, not the net.

Only ever striking fresh and static. A technique practised exclusively from a standing start with fresh legs disappears in the last twenty minutes of a match. Progress every striking topic to moving balls, tired legs and a defender closing, or accept that you have coached a warm-up trick.

Adapting it to your level

In youth football, striking mechanics are learned fastest between roughly eight and twelve, so give young players enormous volume with the right equipment: correct ball sizes, light balls for volleys, shorter distances and both feet from the start. Make it playful, with targets, points and games, because a seven-year-old will not repeat anything boring, and keep sessions from becoming pure technique lectures. One cue at a time, then let them kick.

For adult grassroots teams, striking work earns its place inside things you already do: a passing warm-up becomes a striking warm-up with distance and surface targets, finishing games end training twice a month, and set-piece takers get five minutes of dead-ball reps while others do something else. Adults will not queue politely for technique work, so hide the reps inside competition and nobody complains.

The takeaway

Coach the plant foot before the striking foot. Name the surface for the job: laces for power, instep for curl, outside for disguise. Teach through the ball as the default and across it as a choice. Then design sessions where the rep count, not the speech, does the coaching.

If you want ready-made technical session plans and progressions, they are part of Coach Notes Pro, alongside the rest of our coaching library.