Inside Red Bull's Ball Control Drills: A 7-Drill Plan

Inside Red Bull's Ball Control Drills: A 7-Drill Plan

The best football training drills for ball control are short, repeated, close-touch exercises, and Red Bull's April 2026 guide by Riley Hunter, featuring Gotham FC's Jaedyn Shaw and Olivia Moultrie, boils them down to seven. Goal Moments recommends running those seven in a 20-minute block, three times a week, across the United States and anywhere soccer is played. Work in 30-second rounds, count your clean touches, and switch feet every round so your weaker foot gets at least 40 percent of the reps. Do not confuse these with the Oklahoma Sooners' strength and conditioning pages, which cover American football and build the engine rather than the touch. Expect measurable change in about four weeks if you log your scores. Start with two cones, one ball and a phone timer, then add pressure only after you hit 40 clean touches in a round.

The Bottom Line

Here's the answer, apprentice, before you go scrolling for a fancier one. Ball control improves from small, boring, countable reps, not from a drill with a clever name. Red Bull's seven-drill piece, published on 9 April 2026, says the same thing in its own way: simple exercises that sharpen your touch, your dribbling and your overall game. I read it twice (I got burned by a site once that promised a "secret method" and delivered a PDF full of nothing, so now I double-check everything). Then I checked it against the plain description of the sport on Wikipedia's association football page, which reminds you the game is played mostly with the feet and a ball that never stops being awkward. So the question is not which drill is magic. The question is which seven drills you can actually repeat three times a week for a month. Hold that thought, because there's a catch, and the catch is sitting in the search results right next to the soccer pages.

The catch is simple. Search "football training drills" and Google serves you American football too. One of the reference pages I pulled came from the University of Oklahoma, whose strength and conditioning hub lists a Football Nutrition Packet, a Recruit Development Program manual and Individual Movement Coaching Points. Good material, but it builds bodies for a different sport. Another result was the FIFA World Cup 26 Los Angeles site, which announces eight matches and 39 days of fan celebrations around the FIFA Fan Festival at the LA Memorial Coliseum. Lovely if you want a match-day plan, useless if you want a better first touch. A casino ranking even wandered into the pile (I did not click anything, lesson learned). Goal Moments covers the 2026 World Cup daily, so we watch this mismatch happen constantly: fans see a great match, get inspired, and land on the wrong page. Sort the noise first. Only one of the four pages is a true drills page.

Want the full match-day and tactics context that sits around drills like these? Here's a handy next step.

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What Players Actually See

Stand on a real pitch and the game looks nothing like a cone course. What a player sees is a moving ball, a defender closing from the blind side and a gap that lasts about a heartbeat. That is why the Red Bull guide leans on Jaedyn Shaw, an attacking midfielder for Gotham FC and the first Vietnamese-American to play for the USWNT, who is known for playmaking and versatility. A playmaker is paid for what the first touch does under pressure, not for how pretty it looks in an empty gym. So every drill you pick has to smuggle in at least one of three real-game ingredients: a moving ball, a head that is up, or a defender, even if the "defender" is only a wall or a partner calling out colors. Drills that include none of those are warm-ups wearing a costume. I say this gently, but you never listen when I say it quietly, so I will say it again: cones alone do not teach football (you know how it is, everyone buys the cones first).

Here is the seven-drill block I run, built around the same brief of touch, dribbling and overall control. Treat it as my interpretation of that brief, not a copy of anyone's list.

1. Toe taps, alternating feet, 30 seconds
2. Inside-outside touches through a five-cone line
3. Figure-eight dribble around two cones set two metres apart
4. Wall passes with a controlled first touch, both feet
5. Sole rolls and pull-backs, stationary then moving
6. Juggling to a target of 10 clean touches
7. Turn-and-go through a two-cone gate

Notice what is missing: nothing needs a goal, a team or a gym membership. A ball, a wall and a patch of flat ground cover all seven. Moreover, every one of them can be scored with a number, which matters more than you think, and I will get to that next.

The 3 Things That Matter Most

Strip away the packaging and three variables decide whether the drills work. Everything else is decoration. I would rather you remember these three than all seven drills, because they transfer to any exercise you invent later.

1. Count clean touches, not minutes. A "clean" touch keeps the ball within a stride of your foot.
2. Give your weaker foot at least 40 percent of the reps. Alternate feet by round so you cannot cheat.
3. Keep your head up on a signal. A partner (or a phone timer with a colored screen) flashes a color, and you must call it without losing the ball.

Now the part most competing guides skip. Scoring only counts if the head-up check is attached to it. In my own protocol, a touch only counts as clean if you can still name the color shown during that round. It sounds fussy, but it kills the classic beginner habit of staring at the ball for 20 minutes and then freezing in a match when you finally look up. Here is the reasoning: a game rewards decisions made while the ball is moving, so a metric that ignores your eyes trains the wrong skill. Also, log the score right after each round, not at the end of the session. Memory flatters you (rookies always remember their best round and forget the other nine). After a month of logs, a rise from, say, 28 to 40 clean touches per 30 seconds tells you more than any feeling of improvement.

Curious how touch work connects to the tactical side of the tournament? Take a look at what we cover.

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How Do You Run the Seven Drills Step by Step?

Run them in 30-second rounds with 15 seconds of rest, one drill after another, and score clean touches after every round. Begin at a pace where you rarely lose the ball, then speed up only after hitting your target. Add the head-up color call from the second week.

The patient version goes like this, and I will be walking you through it slowly because I know you skim. First, mark your space: two cones for the gate, five for the line, and a wall or rebounder within three metres. Second, set a phone timer for 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off. Third, start at a speed that gives you at least 80 percent clean touches; speed without control just practices mistakes. Fourth, write the number down immediately. Fifth, move on only when you hit your target in two consecutive sessions. I spent my first week ignoring step five and wondered why my numbers bounced around like a bad exchange rate (never again). The reason it works is that progress becomes binary: you either earned the next level or you did not.

1. Mark cones and locate a wall.
2. Set the 30-second and 15-second timer.
3. Start at 80 percent clean touches or better.
4. Log the score right after each round.
5. Raise the target only after two sessions at the current one.

What Does a 20-Minute Session Look Like?

A 20-minute session is a three-minute warm-up, fourteen minutes of seven drills in 30-second rounds, and three minutes of free juggling or a cool-down. Do it three times a week. That totals about 60 minutes weekly, which is enough for visible change within four weeks.

Here is the schedule I'd hand any apprentice, with the maths shown so you can check it (checking is a habit, not an insult).

• Minutes 0 to 3: easy jogging with the ball, both feet
• Minutes 3 to 17: seven drills, two rounds each, 30 seconds on and 15 off, which fills about 10.5 minutes of work plus transitions
• Minutes 17 to 20: juggling attempts to your 10-touch target and a written log

Two rounds per drill across seven drills gives 14 rounds, and at roughly 40 clean touches each that is over 500 quality touches per session. The point is density: a normal team session may give a midfielder far fewer touches because of queues and waiting. If you want a real-world reminder of why touch matters, watch the World Cup fixtures on the FIFA World Cup 26 Los Angeles schedule, where eight matches will be played at the venue, and count how often the best players control the ball with one touch under pressure. For deeper tactical reading, see our [Internal Link: team tactics breakdowns for the 2026 World Cup] and the [Internal Link: player stats hub].

Edge Cases & Gotchas

Now the fine print, because this is where beginners get burned (and I have the scars). The first gotcha is surface. A bobbly turf patch or wet grass wrecks your clean-touch count, so compare scores only on the same surface. Indoors on a futsal floor your numbers will run higher; that is not improvement, just a friendlier bounce. The second is ball size and pressure: a flat or over-inflated ball changes how it rolls off the foot, and a score logged with a bad ball is fiction. Check it before every session, the way I check the URL of every site before I type anything into it.

The third gotcha is the one the Oklahoma-style pages quietly teach you. Strength and conditioning is real and valuable, but heavy leg work fatigues the small stabilizing muscles that govern touch. Scheduling your ball drills right after a heavy lower-body lifting session will drag your clean-touch score down for reasons that have nothing to do with skill. A practical rule that follows from this reasoning: do touch drills before lifting on the same day, or at least 24 hours after a hard leg session. That is a recommendation from logic, not a lab result, so test it against your own log. The fourth is paid programs. Anyone selling a "secret" ball control system for a monthly fee is selling what you just read for free. If you want more drill structure, our [Internal Link: beginner training plans] cover it without the upsell.

Ready for the full picture, from touch to tactics? Here is where to go next.

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Verdict

Pick the seven drills, run them for 20 minutes three times a week, count clean touches with your head up, and give your weaker foot its 40 percent. That is the entire method. The Red Bull guide by Riley Hunter is a perfectly good starting point, the Oklahoma pages are a good starting point for a different sport, and the LA World Cup page is a good starting point for your travel plans. Do not mix them up. If you log every session, in four weeks you will own a number that proves you improved, which is worth more than any promise from a stranger online (trust me, I learned that the expensive way). Goal Moments will keep covering the 2026 World Cup day by day, so you can watch the world's best do under pressure what you are practicing at 30 seconds a round. Now go find a wall, and stop reading, since you never finish what you start. See our [Internal Link: daily World Cup match predictions] when you come back.

Finished your first week of logs and want more daily football insight? Let us help you take the next step.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are ball control drills in football?

A: Ball control drills are short repeated exercises that train how the foot receives, cushions and moves the ball. They include toe taps, cone dribbling, wall passes and juggling. The goal is to keep the ball within a stride of your feet while your head stays up. Most programs, including the seven-drill Red Bull guide, use rounds of about 30 seconds so quality stays high.

Q: How do I start football training drills as a complete beginner?

A: Start with two cones, one ball and a phone timer. Do 30-second rounds with 15 seconds of rest, alternating feet each round. Pick three drills in week one, such as toe taps, a figure-eight dribble and wall passes. Write down the number of clean touches after every round, and add the other four drills only when your scores stop improving.

Q: Are the Oklahoma football drills the same as soccer drills?

A: No, the University of Oklahoma pages cover American football strength and conditioning. They include a nutrition packet, a recruit development program and movement coaching points. Those resources build power, speed and recovery habits rather than a soccer first touch. You can borrow the general conditioning ideas, but use soccer-specific drills for ball control.

Q: How often should I do ball control drills to see results?

A: Three 20-minute sessions per week is enough to see measurable change in roughly four weeks. Consistency beats length, because the small muscles and timing behind touch respond to frequent, fresh repetitions. If your clean-touch score per 30 seconds is not rising after four weeks, check your ball pressure, surface and fatigue from leg workouts before changing the drills.

Q: Why is my touch getting worse during drills?

A: Your touch usually worsens because of fatigue, a bad ball or rushing the speed. Heavy leg sessions can lower your clean-touch count for a day or more. Check that the ball is properly inflated, slow down to a pace with 80 percent clean touches, and rest 15 seconds between rounds. If scores stay low for a week, drop back one difficulty level.

Q: How much do football training drills cost?

A: You can run the full seven-drill plan for under 30 dollars. You need a ball, five to seven cones and a wall or rebounder, and your phone supplies the timer. Free guides like the Red Bull article cover the drills themselves. Be wary of any paid program that charges a monthly fee for the same material.