A better view of the possession by this team at the La Liga Promises tournament in Villareal. Barcelona won the tournament beating other top La Liga academies including Espanyol, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid.

If you have trained with YPT before you have undoubtedly heard me tell the story of my very first day observing at a professional European academy many years ago. It was at PSV Eindhoven, in The Netherlands, and it was not a training session I saw first, but a match of u12 players. What you are seeing in this video is what I saw that day and this is what blew me away: the high level of technical ability, the speed of play and decision making and overall soccer intelligence and confidence by such young players. That day changed the course of my career.

The technical proficiency of these 12 year olds is remarkable but not surprising considering where they learned it. What you are witnessing is years of intense technical training, day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out, month-in, month-out…

Of course, the signature possession by this team is impressive but what is even more impressive, to me at least, is the impeccable quality of the passing and first touch of these young players. The passes are perfectly weighted and no matter hard they pass to each other, the first touch is practically perfect and never a problem. Also notice when receiving, the first touch is away from pressure then they need to be. These players are not simply controlling the ball, they are preparing it for the next pass and they already know where the ball needs to go before it gets to them.

In my experience, North American coaches are not spending enough time on developing proper passing technique and first touch under pressure.

If you like this video please like and subscribe. I have been fortunate to visit some of Europe's best academies and I want to pass on as much of what I have seen as I can. I hope some of it can help you and your team. I try to add videos from European academies every day so please like, subscribe and hit that bell so you will know when new videos go up.

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