Goalkeeping

Let's be straight with you: World Cup is the only game in our current set with a true goalkeeper, and we'd rather say so than pad this page. But it's a genuinely great keeper game. With every country attacking one goal, the keeper faces a shot every few seconds, smothers rebounds in traffic, and restarts play with a serve after every save — twenty minutes in that goal is more real keeper work than a season of standing in a quiet net. Give the gloves to a confident kid or take a turn yourself, rotate each round, and keep every serve low along the ground.

You can sneak keeper reps into everything else you play. Rotate a different kid into World Cup's goal every round so the touches spread across the roster. In any small-goal game, run one round where the goal's owner may use hands within a step of the line. And in the backyard, the oldest keeper drill there is still works: you shoot, they dive, swap jobs on every save. Coach three things and nothing more — ready position (knees bent, hands up in front), get your body behind the ball, and watch it all the way into your hands.

A word on ages: most leagues don't use keepers at U4–U6, and that's developmentally right — don't rush it. At U7–U9, keeper turns should be short and shared; nobody is "the keeper" yet. From U10 up, a kid who loves the gloves deserves real coaching, and World Cup's chaos is a better classroom than a shooting line: every save is followed by a decision — smother, distribute, restart — which is the actual job.