By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s featured activity works on dealing with corner kicks.
Corner kicks are one of the most difficult situations for keepers to deal with. The reasons range from having a lot of players in a small area which makes decision making difficult (“Can I get the ball?”, “Should I punch or catch” etc). It also is difficult as different teams take completely different approaches to corner kicks so the situation a team saw last week might be very different the next week. One big reason corner kicks are so difficult for keepers is they don’t prepare for them enough.
To start you might have a keeper in goal and a player serving balls in from the corner.
The keeper decides whether to come and get the ball or whether to stay back.. The problem is many keepers never train beyond this point.
The next step is to put an attacking player and a defending player right on the keeper.
Now when the ball gets served the keeper has to make the same decisions as before but must also deal with players in their way.
Next add a couple of runners attacking the goal and a couple of defenders.
Next you can add a couple of players on the posts and some short options.
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The key here is to keep adding players and situations to create as many of the situations the keeper might see in a game. The more the keepers (and the field players) can train for these situations the greater the probability the handle the situations in a game better.
Have a great day!
Lawrence
By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
