By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s topic deals with communication.
One of the most common responses when speak with keepers about the need to increase and/or improve their communication is “I am communicating a LOT”. When I first started to get that response I thought it was a defense mechanism OR they were simply lying because I could hear that they weren’t communicating well.
In time, I found they weren’t lying but rather, they didn’t know how much communication they should be doing and how little (and how ineffectively) they were communicating.
No matter what I tried, whether it was making them watch other keepers, to training sessions where they had to communicate for anything to happen, the improvement was minor at best.
The more I think about this, the more I realize there is actually an easy solution to get the point across of how much better their communication must be.
I love the use of video in keeper training. It’s a great way for a keeper to see what they are doing well and what they are doing poorly. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the video is worth a hundred thousand words. The obvious solution is to put a video camera directly behind the goal, with a mic picking up the audio. This should work so that after the game, the keeper can hear everything they are saying, everything they aren’t saying and figure out what they should say. Sometimes a keeper thinks they are communicating effectively because they are talking a lot but if no one hears, is it really communicating? If they are talking and aren’t saying anything of value (being more of a cheerleader than a team leader) are they really communicating?
Just picking up the audio isn’t good enough because they have to hear what they are saying but also see the situation so they can figure out what they should (or shouldn’t) have said.
Do this for a few games and see how quickly the keeper improves their communication.
Have a great day!
Lawrence
By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
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