Have you ever thought to yourselves ‘I should’ve caught that’ or ‘why didn’t I get to that one’, or even ‘this girl/boy shouldn’t be in goal, they just can’t catch’?
By Eddie Johnson of Reactions Goalkeeping
Well in our opinion what you should be concentrating on as a high priority is . . . . . . THE FEET ! Simply put IF, and we emphasize IF you are taking up a good set position (see our previous article), then as well as the obvious concentration and quality of gloves issues that might be needing attention, the thing that will most likely be causing the issues is footwork, or more over, the lack of it!
OK, to break it down and make sense of how footwork can make you catch better we need you all to imagine how easy it is to do anything standing completely still. EASY but once movement is required every single thing that you might do whether football related or not becomes more difficult. Take archery for instance, IF we could all stay absolutely still whilst trying to fire a heavy bow the one with the best eyesight would invariably end up the winner BUT we can’t and even the slightest of movements of hand, arm, body or feet will drastically effect your ability to hit a massive target only a few metres away! So if you bring that back to football, it is immediately apparent that movement is the key to nearly every aspect of any football skill. Unfortunately we cannot stand still in football and the ball doesn’t always go exactly to your hands as a keeper!
So the natural instinct of a child (or adult) is to send the hands quickly towards the ball. Well there lies the problem, the ball is generally travelling at high speed in a totally different direction to the movement of the hands, so getting the two to meet at the exact crossing point of hand movement and ball flight is very difficult to calculate. Luckily we all carry a super computer around with us that is perfectly capable of instantaneously calculating ball flight, trajectory, wind speed, weather conditions, etc (the human brain). Unfortunately it is hampered by unimportant information in its database, such as the striker is following in, oh no – deflection. or what time is x-factor on tonight, etc, etc.
To try to help the brain make it’s best calculations we need to minimise it’s calculating parameters (very Star Trek). What we are basically getting at is IF the hands have less to do, they will do it better. As keepers, after years of practice catching is something we do without a second thought. But if you can get to a ball without moving your hands it is so much easier!
Getting back to the set position, it can now be seen how important that the hand and arm positioning can be. If a ball comes to you at perfect height, the good set position will allow a catch that takes no effort at all as the ball fits the gloves perfectly, but if off target moving the feet first will give the same result as the hands don’t need to work, just catch. If you fire your hands towards the ball by virtue of the physicality of one arm not being able to reach as easy as the other, the catching position changes and becomes more difficult.
How often do we concede from a rebound follow up or a corner that was conceded by a decent but one-handed parry? If the footwork is fast and good, both hands will be a bigger barrier and might catch to avoid this.
Lee Kendall – listen for the “good feet that”, etc comments
Train the brain to train the feet to help the hands to save the team. Nothing is perfect but if the feet move first, the hands can do less, get there faster and reach further. I suppose we could have just said that at the start but it is nice to delve into the WHY? In short: concentrate on great quality, lightening fast footwork and everything gets easier, reducing the chance of mistakes.
Obviously there are infinite variables in footy but the brain will sort them out automatically if the feet allow it time.
However deep you want to go with physical analysis, the fact is it ain’t called FOOTball for nothing!
For more information or tips on becoming a goalkeeper visit Reactions Goalkeeping.
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