A striker with clean finishing technique still won’t score if their movement never earns them the chance in the first place. That’s the part that gets skipped in most youth striker training, which is heavy on shooting reps and light on the movement that creates the shot.
A Real Example Worth Studying
I broke this down for the coaches in my community using Ollie Watkins’ goal for England against the Netherlands. Watkins runs diagonally across the defender to receive a pass from Cole Palmer, which makes it hard for the defender to nip in front of him while the ball is travelling. When the ball is under a metre away, he slows, turns his body so his back is to the defender to protect it, and disguises his next move. Then he fakes to turn back into space with the outside of his right foot, and instead takes the ball into half a yard of space with the inside of it. The finish is excellent, but the setup movement did most of the work.
That’s the pattern worth teaching: the run creates the angle, the body shape protects the ball and disguises the next action, and only then does the technical finish matter.
Reading The Run Before You Coach It
I ran a poll for coaches in my community asking which run a striker should make in a specific game situation. Out of 56 votes: 3 said drop deep to drag a defender away, 12 said go diagonal across the centre-back and along the full-back’s blind side, 38 said run between the centre-backs, and 3 said run across and switch markers. The majority read was between the centre-backs, but the real coaching point isn’t which answer is “correct” in isolation, it’s that the striker doesn’t necessarily need to receive the ball at all. The value of a run is often the space it opens for a teammate, not the pass it wins for itself.
Sessions That Train Movement, Not Just Finishing
Wide and Behind Movement. A 7-a-side game split into three zones, with only one striker and one defender allowed in the attacking end zone. The striker can score in the big goal but has to vary how they get there, dropping deep, peeling wide, or running in behind, rather than just standing on the shoulder waiting. Coaching points: encourage variety in the movement, and teach the striker to recognise when to hold the ball, when to run behind, and when to combine with a teammate instead.
Timing of the Drop. Set up mannequins to simulate a back four and two midfielders in the final third. The striker drops deep at the right moment to receive with their back to goal and link with a midfielder, then the sequence progresses to a finish. Coaching points: recognise when to drop without crowding your own midfield, receive with an open body shape, and decide quickly whether to turn or lay the ball off.
Adjusting Runs. Half a pitch, a goal, a goalkeeper, and two gates made from poles or cones. In one version the player checks short, bounces the ball back to a server, then bends their run behind the gate to receive a pass in stride. In the other, the server calls a cone colour and the player has to adjust their run to that side and finish. Coaching points: time the run so it arrives neither too early nor too late, and change pace on the final movement to create separation.
The Penalty Box King. A competitive first-time finishing exercise in the six-yard box area, where a server assesses the striker’s run and plays the ball to their back foot for a first-time finish. Coaching points: time your movement so you’re coming onto the ball rather than standing still waiting for it, and use disguise before you shoot so the goalkeeper can’t read the placement early.
Building It By Age
With younger players, keep the language simple: moving to receive, finding space, and praise for any intelligent movement without overcomplicating the instruction. As players get older, introduce the individual patterns, dropping, wide, behind, and adjusted runs, one at a time, then start chaining them together and asking why they chose a particular movement rather than just telling them.
The Point Worth Repeating
Great strikers aren’t just born with good movement, it gets developed the same way finishing technique does, through repetition in realistic scenarios. A striker with average finishing and excellent movement will consistently outscore a clinical finisher who stands still.
Clean movement still needs a clean first touch to finish it off, so if that’s the gap in your forward line, 12 first touch drills that build control under pressure is worth pairing with the sessions above. And if you’re coaching the defenders on the other side of these same runs, a full defending progression for U12 teams covers exactly what they need to cope with it.
For the full set of striker movement and finishing sessions, including the Penalty Box King and the full adjusting-runs progression, they’re in the Football Coaching Academy. If you want a striker session built around your own team’s specific problem, FootballGPT will generate one from a short description of what you’re seeing in matches.
Watch your own striker’s next few matches: how many of their touches come from a run that created space for someone else, not just for themselves?