By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
Welcome to the Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today’s topic deals with the reliable keeper.
Keepers dream about making the spectacular save. They dive through the air saving the shot into the upper corner and 70,000 spectators go crazy. The momentum shifts and their team counter attacks and scores the winning goal with little time left in the game and the team wins the championship!
Above is how the dream goes and occasionally (very rarely) it might work that way.
The more common occurrence is the keeper let’s an easy ball in which results in the team getting down on themselves and this escalates into a defeated team giving up more and more opportunities.
Whether it’s fair or not, a team is more likely to get down on themselves from a bad keeper play than to get uplifted from a positive keeper play.
Knowing this is true, shouldn’t keepers focus more on not making the big mistake rather than in trying to make the big save?
I’m always amazed watching keepers training where the keeper is diving over a barrel/bench/person yet can’t catch a simple ball. Or, a keeper is working on backward dives without knowing how to do the footwork in order to get back before doing the dive.
The spectacular is wonderful but given a choice between a keeper who can pull off the occasional spectacular save but also let’s in the occasional weak goal, and the keeper who rarely makes the spectacular goal but never let’s in the weak goal, I’ll choose the second option every time.
Have a great day!
Lawrence
By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.
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