By Patrick Kasperitis -
The ability for goalkeepers to judge their angles correctly is paramount to the success of any goalkeeper. Athleticism can only make up for so much where as good positioning can make any save look comfortable. Below is a session that I use to help goalkeepers improve their understanding of the angles they need to take within the goal.
The key to this skill is making sure that the goalkeeper keeps their body weight forward so that they can get to a good set position and make a good dive. We want our goalkeepers to have that forward body weight and if that is not present in their movement, they might be flat-footed when trying to make a save or will dive backwards.
Here is the set-up
:So Next we want the goalkeeper to understand that there is an imaginary line that runs from each post to the front cone of the box.
The goalkeeper will also want to think of the field as being split into three parts as illustrated by the dotted lines.
The goalkeeper will shot stop from within the box in the appropriate spot with small variations in order to adjust for the location within the middle space.
The most challenging aspect is dealing with balls outside of the middle cone. And for that they must be able to judge where they are in the goal. It helps if they can think about it in terms of drawing lines in their head from where the ball is to certain spots in the goal, for this exercise you will want to judge it in terms of the set of cones for the middle box. You can scaffold this by gradually taking away these visual helpers.
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By Patrick Kasperitis - Graduate Assitant Women's Soccer Coach - St Mary's University, SA United Junior Program Goalkeeping Director, South Texas ODP Staff
