Saturday, January 19, 2013

Keepers Blog, Episode 1


                 

                Welcome to the first edition of my goalkeeper’s blog. (Clever title forthcoming)

                As a goalie with over 20 years of playing experience, I’m excited to use this platform to offer advice to parents, aspiring young goalies and their coaches. Here I’ll discuss all things goalie, including theory, strategy, drills, coaching tactics, etc.



This particular article is directed at coaches, parents and players contemplating a position in net. I intend to cover a fairly common mistake that coaches make when making a decision about their teams goalie. This is a subject that has been a sore issue of mine for years, and I am very excited that I finally have a medium to turn it into a point of discussion that will potentially reach the eyes of quite a few readers.

Coaches, I’m going to make a safe assumption that one of the more frustrating areas of coaching your youth soccer team has been how to deal with filling that pesky goal keeper position.

Parents, you’ve noticed your child’s exceptional ability to make saves and give his/her team a winning advantage.

Players, you caught the goal keeping bug. To you making a clutch save feels just as satisfying as bending a great goal into the upper 90. The desire to turn yourself into a keeper is hard to describe and difficult to ignore.

But, let’s consider a few things first……

To state the obvious, having a strong keeper in net is one of the most important elements of fielding a successful team. Without a capable pair of hands guarding your net, it is inevitable that more goals will be scored, and subsequently, more games lost. Furthermore, without confidence in their keeper there will be added psychological stress put on the defenders and mid-fielders to keep the ball out of their 18. This phenomenon will inevitably domino and alter the play of your entire team.

There aren’t many coaches, players or fans that would dispute my claim that possessing a strong dominion in your goal will help you win games. So, when one of your young players displays some talent and desire to fill this position, you breathe a sigh of relief and get this youngster some full time goal keeper training.

Problem solved, right?

WRONG!

All too often I observe youth soccer teams, some as young as 8, employ the use of a full time goalie. Typically this isn’t just the coach selecting a random player to play net. More often than not, it is because a player has a genuine interest in the position and makes an earnest request to play there. Should that player show some talent guarding the goal, it’s usually an easy choice for the coach to continue to use this player in goal at a full time capacity.

I opine that nothing could be more detrimental to a player! If a coach makes the decision to train a footballer as the team’s primary goalkeeper before that player has established strong, fundamental skills, he or she can cause tremendous detriment to the development of that player.  

As such, there are three major areas where I feel these players typically suffer.

1.)    General foot skills/ball control.  A good goalkeeper must develop foot skills!  Poor ball control begets a lack of confidence. A lack in confidence begets bad decisions. Bad decisions beget conceded goals. (Eh hem…David de Gea)

2.)    Striking the ball properly. I was recently involved in a conversation with a coach from a local college who told me that none of his goalies were able to clear a goal kick past mid-field. He also told me that these players were terrific athletes, but were never properly trained how to strike a ball. The neglect afforded to these goalies by not teaching them fundamental skills, such as striking a ball, is unacceptable.

3.)    The vision of an outfielder. Playing the outfield has a much different “feel” in both tempo and strategy. It’s important for ALL players, including goalies, to understand the perspective of an outfielder and learn how to “see the play”. This is nearly impossible to teach a player without giving them the proper playing experience in that position. For example, understanding what a striker is thinking will help a goalie predict what an attacking player’s next move is. Remember, good decisions result in making great saves, and the ability to predict a striker’s attack will save many goals.

To strengthen my argument, I’d like to offer a quick, albeit (all too American) analogy about goalkeepers.

Let’s liken our position to a baseball pitcher. Both positions are highly specialized roles in a respective sport that fields a large team of players who operate in similar capacities. These roles require their perspective players to dedicate a large amount of time practicing that role’s particular nuances away from their teammates.

Unfortunately, this focused dedication to a specific craft has an untoward effect on the player’s ability to participate as any other role on the team.  Ever watch a pitcher try to hit a baseball? Pretty sad stuff! Heck, these guys can’t even run the bases! Good thing for them, they aren’t expected to. But this point begs me to outline a major difference in the analogy of these positions.

In baseball, pitchers don’t dedicate all of their time to pitching until the college level; even at this level they are expected to perform offensively to some degree. Young pitchers will generally develop their ability to pitch, but not at the expense of the fundamentals of the sport. In my opinion, this is absolutely the correct model for all youth athletics.

So why are we making this mistake in developmental soccer, and what can we do to fix it?

The first question isn’t an easy one to answer, but it is important that we recognize that the problem exists. Perhaps the issue arises simply out of the sheer importance a decent goalkeeper is for a team. The collective need of a team can be a powerful motive on the decisions a coach will make.  But we need to remember that the development of individual skills is far more important than simply winning games.

The solution is simple.

 First, as mentioned, we need to be aware that keeping a player off of the field in this manner hurts their future as a player. Next, to state the obvious, don’t concentrate a player’s duties to goal tending until their fundamental skills are adequately developed. The maturation of skills is unique to the individual player, but generally speaking, dedication to a career as a goal keeper should begin sometime in early high school.

As an aside, this article is NOT meant to discourage young footballers from learning to be a goalie. Goal tending is an extremely rewarding craft that is quite difficult to master. I applaud your decision to dedicate yourself to the most difficult position on the pitch. Just be mindful to keep from neglecting your other skills. Your future self will thank you.

Thank you for reading my mad rants. Many more to come…….CHEERS.


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