When coming in centrally, it is usually best for the attacker to come in at speed. Indeed, in general, it is a good idea to teach players to finish at speed, as there always will be breakaways in games and it is a pity to see a player who cannot capitalize on these chances.

To finish at speed is really quite easy - but, like anything, there is a knack to doing it. Because the player is going at speed, and his momentum will transfer to the ball, a "pass" at speed will be as hard as many shots. This pass also will keep the ball on the ground, which will force the keeper to make a difficult save (ground balls are harder to save than air balls).

There are three things that the player must do as he approaches goal at speed. The first is to get the ball under close control, which means that he is going to need to pull/drag the ball along with his dribbling foot to keep it right in front of him. The second is to pick the corner of the net where he wants the ball to go. The third is to turn the dribble foot at the proper angle to put the ball there - and to keep running as his foot strikes the ball so that he arrives at the net just a bit behind the ball.

While working on this technique, the best approach is to make a bunch of cone goals and let the kids experiment with making scoring runs. It is fine to let them just make hard passes thru the goal; keep on running; then turn around and come back the other way.

Until they get the technique down, there is no point in working with the opposition of a keeper. However, once they have the basic idea down, it is time to add a keeper. Of course, the easiest keeper to finish on is a keeper who freezes in goal. At younger ages, this is quite common (and sometimes happens for various reasons, even at higher levels). So, this is a good place to start.

Make several goals so that only 3 players are working on finishing at any one goal - which permits you to have one who is getting his ball, one who is getting ready to go, and one who is heading back to set up for another run) - and put a parent in goal with instructions to stay in the goal, but to move to make the save if the player send the ball early. Players will soon learn that, if they shoot too early on a stationary keeper, they will give him too much time to get over for the save. As a result, they will learn to hold the ball until they feel certain that they can get a shot/pass into the chosen corner before the keeper can get there. As players gain experience, they will want to start experimenting with fakes (and keepers also will want to try some fakes of their own to try to get the player to shoot with a non-favored foot or otherwise disrupt the shot).

After learning to shoot on a stationary keeper when coming in centrally at speed, the players will need to learn to finish on a keeper who is coming off his line. This is harder to learn, but is an essential part of their finishing tools. There are three basic ways to beat a keeper who is coming off of his line with the intent of diving at the ball. The first is to shoot early (taking the shot as soon as you see that he is coming out). The second is to shoot just before he arrives (by using a quick sidestep to get space just as he dives at the ball). The third is to use a feint to cause him to dive to the wrong side, then pass the ball around him for an easy finish. Most players will opt for the first and third options, as the chances of being taken out by the keeper are fairly high in the second option (although courageous older players may use this to try to draw a PK in situations where they held the ball a bit too long and seemed likely to lose the ball anyway). This is NOT something to teach younger players, however. Besides, they will have plenty to do in working on the first and third options - particularly since the coach will insist that they alternate using their dominant and non-dominant foot for finishing (as there is nothing worse than to see a player miss an obvious scoring chance as he wasted time trying to use the favored foot for a shot).

Now, in all of these scenarios, the situation was set up so that the player had plenty of time to go 1 v 1 with the keeper. While this often occurs in games, the most frequent situation is that a defender will be rapidly closing from the side or the back, so that there will be a smaller "window" of opportunity in which to shoot. Thus, the next thing which the coach will want to do is to add a defender who has instructions to run at a steady pace about 6 feet behind the attacker. If the attacker slows down, the defender will gain on him (and this is exactly what you want to have happen in order for realistic pressure to be applied). The attacker has to learn to be aware of the defender - but to leave his real focus on the keeper.

The next phase is to work on situations where a defender is coming in from the near side. Before the defender gets within slide tackling range of the ball (10-15 feet), it is important to move the ball to the far foot - which is the foot farthest from the incoming defender. This is one of the reasons why it is essential that players learn to dribble with both feet - as defenders have an aggravating habit of coming in from different sides, so attackers have to be prepared for this. Indeed, as defenders become more skilled, they will quickly figure out when an attacker is one-footed and will take advantage of this information by heavily guarding the favored side.

Once the ball is on his far foot, the attacker effectively has ruled out the slide tackle as an immediate option. However, the slide tackle is still an option to clear away a shot. Given the incoming angle of the defender, a near post shot is usually not available. Furthermore, as soon as the defender gets his body inside the posts and can help to cut down the near post angle, there is a high likelihood that the keeper will charge the attacker - with pretty good confidence that the attacker will be trying to put the ball in the far corner. So, what are the options? One option is to go for the far post early. Another option is to look for timing errors on the charge and split the defenders with a neat pass to the central/near area. An additional option (for more advanced players) is to fake a shot at the far post, then chip the keeper or slot the ball towards the near side as he dives towards the far post.

From this discussion of the multiple options just for central finishing with one or no defenders, it should be clear to newer coaches why attacking is harder to teach new players than defending. Likewise, it is obvious that training attackers takes considerable amounts of time, observation and encouragement. These factors often cause youth coaches to decide to focus their efforts on just 2-3 attackers who show some natural talent/affinity for goal scoring. However, all players need to be introduced to these basic concepts - and it is not as hard as it might seem to provide this training to all of them.