Tracking Set Pieces: Simple Analytics for Amateur Teams
You do not need an analyst or expensive software to know whether your set pieces are working. A pen, a sheet of paper, and five minutes after each game will tell you more than a vague feeling that corners are not clicking. Tracking turns opinion into evidence: which routine creates chances, which delivery keeps failing, where you keep conceding. For a time-poor coach this is the cheapest improvement you can make, because it stops you wasting precious session time fixing the wrong thing. This guide gives you a simple system any volunteer can run from the touchline or the stands.
Open this routine on the free board — drag the players, draw your own runs, no account.
The five things worth counting
Do not track everything; track what changes decisions. For attacking set pieces, tally just five outcomes per type: delivered into the danger zone or not, first contact won or lost, shot created or not, and goal or not. A simple grid with corners, attacking free kicks and throws down the side, and those outcomes across the top, is enough. For defending, count how many times the opponent got a clean header or a shot from a set piece against you, and roughly where the ball came from. After three or four games a pattern appears: maybe your corners reach the danger zone but you never win first contact, which tells you exactly what to drill next. This is far more useful than counting everything and acting on nothing.
Who tracks it and when
You are coaching, so you cannot also tally live in detail. Use a substitute, an injured player, or a parent as your set-piece spotter, handed the sheet and the five things to mark. If nobody is free, do it from memory in five minutes straight after the final whistle while it is fresh, capturing each corner and free kick as best you can. Either way, keep every sheet in one folder or a note on your phone so the season builds into a record. The point is consistency, not precision; a rough tally kept every week beats perfect data kept once. Over a season this becomes the single clearest picture of whether your dead-ball work is paying off.
Turn the numbers into next week's session
Tracking only matters if it changes what you drill. Read your sheet through one question: where does our set piece break down? If deliveries rarely reach the danger zone, spend the fifteen-minute block on your taker's repetition, not on runs. If you win first contact but never get a clean shot, your runners are arriving in the wrong place, so rehearse the second movement and the edge-of-box player. If you keep conceding from inswinging corners, fix your near-post protection. Many set-piece tools, including Settik, let you note outcomes against each saved routine, so you can see at a glance which of your plans actually produces chances and quietly retire the ones that never do.
Key points
- You need a pen and five minutes, not an analyst or software.
- Track only five outcomes: delivery, first contact, shot, goal, and where you concede.
- Use a sub, injured player or parent as a spotter, or tally from memory post-match.
- Keep every sheet together so a season-long pattern emerges.
- Read the data through one question: where does our set piece break down?
- Retire routines that never produce chances and reinvest the time.
Common questions
How many games before the data is useful?
Three or four. That is enough for a clear pattern, like deliveries reaching the box but first contact being lost, which points you straight at what to drill next.
Isn't this too much to do while coaching?
It is if you do it alone live. Hand the sheet to a sub or parent, or fill it from memory in five minutes after the whistle. Keep it rough; consistency beats precision.