How to Coach Goal Kicks: Short vs Long

Count them next Saturday. Your team will take somewhere north of ten goal kicks, and if you are honest, most of them are decided by mood. The keeper feels confident, so it goes short. A defender got caught last time, so it goes long. Nobody would accept that randomness at corners, yet a goal kick is a set piece you get ten or more times a match, in the same place, with time to organise.

The debate around goal kicks has hardened into two camps: the possession purists who always go short, and the pragmatists who always go long. Both are wrong for the same reason. They have replaced a decision with a dogma.

Coaching goal kicks well means giving your players a simple test for going short, a proper plan for going long, and enough repetitions of the choice that they read it themselves. This guide covers all three.

Why goal kicks deserve their own session

A goal kick is the most common restart your team controls. Since the 2019 law change allowed team-mates to receive inside the penalty area, it has become a genuine platform: the ball is in play earlier, the pictures are repeatable, and the opposition must choose how many players to commit to stopping you.

That choice is the whole game. If they push numbers up to press your short build-up, they leave space and even numbers behind. If they drop off to win the long ball, they hand you a free pass into your centre backs. Either way, a team with a plan gets something. A team without one gets a 50/50 header ten times a match.

Goal kicks are also where your playing out from the back work either shows up or does not. The principles are the same. The difference is that at a goal kick you get to set the board exactly how you want it, so there is no excuse for a bad starting picture.

The four principles

1. Count before you kick: the spare man test. The decision is arithmetic, not bravery. Before every goal kick, someone (keeper, or a centre back doing the counting for him) checks the first line: how many of us, how many of them? If you have one more passer than they have pressers, someone is free, and short is on. If they match you man for man and the free man does not exist, short is a trap you are setting for yourself. One question, asked every time: where is our spare man?

2. Short is a rehearsed picture, not an act of faith. Going short only works if the positions are taken up before the ball is placed: centre backs wide of the box, full backs high enough to stretch the press, a midfielder showing between the lines, keeper ready to receive back. The first pass is rarely the one that beats the press. It is bait that pulls a presser in, and the second or third pass plays through what he left.

3. Long is a plan, not a punt. A good long goal kick has an address. Pick the target: a striker who wins headers, attacked towards a chosen zone, usually away from their best header of the ball. Then build the structure around him, because the kick itself wins almost nothing. Two or three runners positioned for the flick and the loose ball are what turn a 50/50 into a launchpad. If your team goes long without second-ball runners, you are not being direct, you are donating possession forty yards further forward.

4. Train the decision, not the dogma. Your players should leave training knowing the test, not the answer. Some weeks the opposition presses with two and you build short all day. Some weeks they lock on man for man and the correct call is long, every time, without apology. A team that can only do one of these is playing half the fixture list at a disadvantage.

What the best teams do

Manchester City's goal kicks are the short-build reference. The centre backs are wide of the six-yard box before the ball is down, the keeper is an extra passer, and the first passes are deliberately provocative, inviting the press onto the ball so the pass through it opens. When teams stopped pressing them, they simply walked the ball out instead. The test was answered before the kick was taken.

But watch Brentford under Thomas Frank for the other masterclass. Their long goal kicks are as rehearsed as any corner: a kick aimed at a chosen zone for a physical striker, with midfielders and a winger arranged around the landing area before the ball is struck. They are not hoping to win the first header. They are organised to win the ball after it, which is the part most grassroots teams never train.

The lesson from both is the same. Elite teams do not treat short as clever and long as a failure. They treat both as set plays with a first ball, a structure and a next action, and they choose between them based on what the opposition shows.

How to coach it: a session progression

The progression below is built from drills in our Drill Library, and it deliberately trains both answers before it trains the choice.

Start with the short picture. The Goal Kick Shape Drill sets the starting positions and the early movements: the split centre backs, the pivot showing, the keeper's options. Walk it, then speed it up. Coaching points: positions before the ball is placed, firm passes to feet, and the keeper counting the press out loud so the spare man test becomes a habit.

Then make the first line earn it. 3-2 Build-Up vs Pressing Unit puts your build-up structure against live pressers, which is where players learn to find the free man rather than remember him. Vary the number of pressers between rounds without announcing it. The build-up players must count and adapt, which is exactly the Saturday skill.

Give the long ball its own practice. Competing for First and Second Balls trains the half of the plan most coaches skip. The target attacks the ball, the runners read the flick, and the nearest player reacts first to the loose ball. Coach the runners' starting positions (staggered around the target, not behind him) and demand a reaction the instant the header is won or lost.

Finish with the full decision. Playing Out from Goal Kicks plays the whole picture with real consequences. Let the defending team choose how many they press with, kick by kick, and make the building team read it. Score it: a point for arriving in midfield with control, whether the route was short or long. That scoring line matters, because it tells your players both answers count as success.

Three mistakes that kill goal kicks

Treating long as failure. If going long earns a groan from the touchline, your players will force short passes into a press that has them covered, and the goal you concede will be your fault, not theirs. Long off a counted decision is good football. Say so, loudly, when it happens.

Going long with no second-ball structure. The kick sails towards a lone striker, both teams watch the header, and the opposition midfield collects the loose ball unopposed. If you choose long, the runners are the plan. No runners, no kick.

Letting the keeper decide alone. The player with the worst view of the press is the one taking the kick. Give the counting job to a centre back or the pivot, agree a simple call or signal for short and long, and rehearse it so the whole first line knows the answer before the ball is placed.

Adapting it to your level

In youth football, the retreat line at 7v7 and 9v9 is a standing invitation: opponents must drop to halfway, so your team can take every goal kick short and practise building under a delayed press. Use it every game, and use the spare man language anyway, because the counting habit is the thing that transfers to 11v11. When heading and long kicks are limited or unrealistic at younger ages, the decision work still applies on the ground: short pass or driven ball into the striker's feet.

For adult grassroots teams, be honest about your personnel. If your keeper's longest kick reaches halfway, your long plan needs the target dropping shorter and the runners tighter. If your centre backs hate the ball, build your short picture around a midfielder dropping in instead. The principles do not change, but the plan should look like your players, not like a Premier League clip.

The takeaway

Count the press: spare man means short is on. Set the short picture before the ball is placed. Give the long kick an address and second-ball runners. And coach the decision, not the dogma, because the opposition decides which answer is right this week.

If you want ready-made session plans and video breakdowns for goal kicks and every other game situation, they are part of Coach Notes Pro, alongside the rest of our coaching library.