Session design · 5 min · 18 August 2026

Rondos are not a warm-up

Twenty minutes of a five-v-two that nobody is coaching is not a warm-up. It is twenty minutes.

Every session I watch starts with a rondo. Almost none of them are coached. The players arrive, somebody puts out cones, and twenty minutes disappear.

What a rondo is actually for

Speed of decision under pressure in a tight space. That is it. If you are not coaching the decision, you are running a possession-flavoured jog.

Three constraints that make it a practice

One touch on the outside, two in the middle. A goal for splitting the two defenders. Losers go in immediately, no negotiation. Any of the three turns twenty minutes of habit into something you can coach.

If you only change one thing

Stop it once. Ask one player what they saw before they played the pass. The session changes for the next fifteen minutes, and so does what your players think a rondo is.