Goalkeeper Stuff… And Stuff A tribute to the hapless role of the football goalkeeper…

Pepe Reina and idle transfer gossip

The big bald Spaniard has been in the press a lot this week. Having recently penned a new deal with Liverpool, goalkeeper Reina has now recently been linked to a move away from Anfield – perhaps down south to the Emirates. Yeah, I don’t believe that one either.

“A good keeper is worth 15 points a season…”

But Reina has rightly been attracting attention, with a strong season this year, indeed perhaps Liverpool’s outstanding player. They say that good goalkeepers are worth 10 to 15 points a season, and in Liverpool’s case they can therefore thank Reina for making the difference between a disappointing UEFA Cup place and a historically catastropic mid table finish they would otherwise have finished with.

Now watch this save!

Cue the inevitable video – Jose in action!

It’s all in the feet

So, were you watching closely?

I wasn’t even looking out for it when I first turned on that clip, but by about half way through you start to notice how many times Reina opts to use his feet to clear the ball, rather than the more customary use of the hands. There are a few really notable saves that see him standing up tall – and coming out of the situation well – with clearly absolutely no intention of going down to meet the ball with his body or his hands.

Blame David Seaman (again)

I have to admit I’m really undecided about these modern “no diving” keepers. Keepers like Reina and Carson in particular, following a model notably set down by David Seaman in the 1990s, have been exponents of facing one on one situations on their feet. Fans of this goalkeeping school of thought argue that many one on ones end with the ball going over the keeper’s head, and that standing up and narrowing the angle quickly is a statistically more effective method to use. A bit like keepers that stand up for penalties rather than guessing.

It’s not cricket!

The thing is, it’s just not cricket! I remember the good old days of Neville Southall, a diving and hands goalkeeper in every way – particularly in his more agile early years. That’s goalkeeping! Not this modern playing like a second sweeper style… The likes of Reina, and his new fangled goalkeeping methods, weird looking uhlsport goalkeeper gloves (what were they thinking?!) – it just didn’t used to be done like that!

Now I recognise this isn’t yet the most rational or compelling of arguments – some stats may well in time be needed. But it’s a theme I’m warming up. Watch this space!

Can you get any closer? Still won't score...

Forget the question of The World’s Best Goalkeeper. What about the title of World’s Smartest Football Player? Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon is talked about for many reasons, many of them connected to his wonderful ability as a goalkeeper, his outstandingly glamorous girlfriend, his bizarre visual likeness to Al Pacino, or his famous endorsement of Puma goalkeeper gloves. “The world’s very best goalkeeper”, he is frequently called.

But what about his brain? I’ve got to admit before starting this that I haven’t seen that many interviews with Gigi Buffon (OK, none), which makes this piece a bit risky. But there’s a Buffon interview from 2005 in Cabinet Magazine that is either a hoax or shows the goalkeeper to be surely the most intelligent footballer in the game today.

Let me illustrate.

Frank Lampard and John Terry interview:

Compare and contrast.

Excerpt from Gianluigi Buffon interview, responding to the question “How did you become a goalkeeper?”

“I entered my present profession by accident—a series of geographical, personal, and legal coincidences. A blend of boredom, curiosity, and vanity.”

Pardon?

Don’t you mean something more like, “Well I’ve aways wantid to an the gaffer’s done a lot for me and thankfully I’ve got me big break an never looked back really but it’s a team game and at the end of the day I’ve got to thank the lads and football’s not about one player…”?

But there Gigi is only getting warmed up. With the next question he shifts into a Derrida-like contemplation on the nature of his relationship to football and goalkeeping:

“Foremost, I respect my ignorance, otherwise it would be impossible to maintain my sense of humor. For me, intelligence is always linked to irony, otherwise it becomes monotonous and boring. In order to solve this dilemma, I tried to limit the possibilities, to find an activity in which I could keep the amusement, the pleasure, but within very specific rules so that I wouldn’t get lost and distracted by everything. By choosing football, I killed two birds with one stone.”

It was at this point I began to suspect the interview really to be an elaborate hoax, or at least to involve some massive and liberal paraphrasing by the interviewer. But you know, it’s so much nicer to believe that this is actually how Buffon behaves in interviews… Let’s hope he makes it to the Premiership – the interchanges with Garth Crooks on Match of the Day will be priceless.

The whole interview can and should be read – there’s a link to it at the top of this article. But I leave you with a sublime Buffon quote about the nature of goalkeeping, and of sport in general:

“The records of my actions are minimal—repetitions of the climactic moments, whether they are mistakes or achievements. I have the idea that although a man’s life is compounded of thousands and thousands of moments and days, those many instants and days can be reduced to a single one.

So my single image in the media is precisely about the moments when I try to stop the ball. They are all stills of instantaneous decisions. At the end of the day, it’s a collection of images where I always appear in midair—flying. I like it that the entire record of my life is of it occurring in the air.”

Well, this is annoying. I can’t manage to embed the Daily Motion clip of Cech’s oustanding performance against Spurs this weekend… What a performance.

Sadly for Petr Cech, his great saves, keeping out an onslaught of attempts on goal from the Tottenham side, will probably go mostly forgotten. Chelsea went down in a shock 2-1 defeat at White Hart Lane,  consigning everything Cech did pretty much to irrelevance. Other than keeping in tact their slender 3 goal advantage over Manchester United on goal difference.

And sadly for me, the damn video won’t embed.

But having already started the post, how about taking a look at this nice video from UEFA. Petr Cech offers some training tips for goalkeepers. There are some nice tips here, but nothing the seasoned goalkeeper won’t have encountered before. What is nice, however, is being able to take a look at Petr Cech in close up. No, not the cheesy one liners the producer has inserted between clips (“Wanna know how da be dis good? Practice”… Thanks guys, great advice). But the close up, training ground shots of Cech handling the ball, training, and moving naturally – really nice to watch.

Check out his throwing! He makes that look so easy – lands the ball on a pin head from 35 yards. Outstanding.

Enjoy…

We’ve all done this:

Well, I have anyway. More than once.

The video quality isn’t great, so let’s take a look in high def freeze frame:

A shout of fear, anger, embarrassment...?

The papers all quickly rounded on Wigan goalkeeper Vladimir Stojkovic earlier this week, blaming the Serbian “golman” after this mishap in the Wigan defence sent Wigan one down and opened the door to another two late Carlos Tevez goals. The Sky Sports commentary was even stronger, blaming the goalkeeper for bottling out of the challenge and not being brave enough to get his hands on the ball with two City attackers closing in.

But is that really what happened?

The Guardian advanced the suggestion that Stojkovic believed he couldn’t handle the ball because he thought it was a backpass – was that sarcastic? – but again that’s not the most plausible suggestion.

Watching this situation on TV massively obscures the difficulty of the decision making process that Stojkovic faced here. With only split seconds to react to the chipped through ball, it was hugely unclear right until the fatal moment whether the right thing to do was to stay on his line and make the Wigan defender (who was closer to the ball than any other player) deal with it, or to try to claim the ball and risk being beaten to it by the City attackers.

These are the decisions that legendary keepers like Edwin Van Der Sar just seem to get right every time, and the decisions that show the rest of us to be… well, Everybody Else.

Watching this clip over and over, it seemed to me that the Wigan goalkeeper – having to watch the ball and not perfectly able to see the exact position of the City attackers – at the last minute thinks that he’s going to be beaten to the ball by Tevez. If that perception was correct, he’d have been wrong to continue advancing as though to catch the ball. So instead, he changes his position to the (slightly ridiculous, star shaped) blocking shape, trying to anticipate the direction the ball would take after, he assumes, Tevez gets a foot to it to knock it goalwards.

Unfortunately for the goalkeeper, the perception was wrong. Watching from our armchairs, we can see that he was indeed in a better position than Tevez, and should have continued forward to claim the ball, rather than going for the block. But so easy to see from a retrospective and birds eye camera view – so incredibly difficult in the heat of the moment for the goalkeeper.

Stojkovic in the dressing room after the game...

As a card carrying member of the Goalkeeper’s Union, I should also draw attention to the slightly spineless and destructive attitude of the Wigan defenders. Against an honest goalkeeping mistake, whatever the cause, their visible finger pointing looks (to a biased goalkeeper) slightly pathetic – and certainly doesn’t give the goalkeeper the team solidarity and support he needs in a moment like that. The Wigan centre half too, had his part in the gaffe, choosing to allow Stojkovic to come for the ball, rather than booting it into row Z. Perhaps why he stands and points at the keeper so demonstrably…

An unusually high quality winter goalmouth for the amateur keeper

The thing about the goalmouth is, it makes ALL the difference. Really, it’s hard to emphasise this enough. Every amateur goalkeeper knows this feeling – another away game you’ve spent an hour and a half to drive to and lethargically emerge from the changing rooms to walk out on to the pitch – and that gradual sinking feeling as you realise you’re going to be playing another 90 minutes of Russian Roulette in the goalmouth.

The other thing about the goalmouth is, nobody else knows, and nobody else cares. When you’re a defender, you might vaguely be aware of some momentary passing thought like “phew – glad I’m not in goals for that!” But then again, you probably won’t be – I used to get that but probably only because when I played outfield I was always a goalie impersonating a defender. Most defenders don’t even notice. For the rest of your team, the state of the goalmouth and the area that the goalkeeper has to be prepared to throw himself around for 90 minutes are a matter of at best indifference, and more commonly, total oblivion.

So, partially as a means of therapy, I thought I’d list some of the things that commonly blight the amateur goalkeeper in his goalmouth habitat, in the no doubt vain hope that somebody might take notice, and the vainer hope that somebody might care.

1. The Muddy Goalmouth

Away game – that dirty team on the crap side of town that didn’t even have nets last season. There’s only one room in the changing rooms so you have to change shivering outside as there’s no chance of them vacating. The old groundsman – or somebody’s unemployed uncle – seen darkly through the rain down the far end of the field with – a broom. A broom. They’re actually sweeping water out of the goal area. By the way, one of those activities that’s about as effective as trying to knock somebody out with a tea spoon.

2. Objects in the goalmouth

This actually isn’t even vaguely funny. When I think about the stuff that we found on crap pitches down the years… There’s always old bits of tape strewn around the goal, sure, but the broken metal netting pegs, screws, nails, old cans of paint, ripped up shreds of beer cans chopped up by lawnmowers – so many shreds of cans…!

3. Dog crap

There’s almost no more demotivating a feeling for a goalkeeper, no act more able to awaken the amateur keeper from the idiotic daydream he secretly maintains of being just like a pro really, than scrounging round the back of the nets for a stick or other abandoned hard object to flick lumps of dog crap out of the six yard box. But don’t try and hold up the game! Don’t expect the manager to ask the subs to do it! Don’t expect the ref to hold up kick off while you sort it out!

My first ever training session with my new Sunday team as a 9 year old – new gloves, new goalie shirt from my holiday in the summer, first shot from lads I didn’t know. Nice catch, nice landing – straight into a long skid of yellow c____…

4. Holes

I know I've played on this field...

There’s actually nothing you can do about holes. That smart arse meat head centre midfielder who likes a pop shot will be aiming long rangers at them all game though.

5. And a million more…

That really hard ground with stones and unpredictable bounces.  Dusty surfaces that stop your being able to kick off the ground – as you keep getting blamed from the crowd for crap kicking. Big long grass that holds the ball up. The battle between the amateur goalkeeper and the goalmouth is one of those great unsung and unnoticed facets of the game of amateur football.

So I end with a picture of the goal that every amateur keeper dreams of walking out onto – the kind of goal that might even allow himself to show himself to be half the keeper he thinks he is. Lush green turf. Short grass. White lines he can see. A penalty spot that’s actually in the middle. Beautiful springy give under the studs. Ah, goalie, dream on, dream on…

The stuff that dreams are made of...

Half of being awesome is looking awesome

Even crap keepers make a great save every now and then. So in a way, this is one of those universal things that every goalkeeper has to confront. But for some reason, it’s one of those things that just doesn’t really get talked about that much.

The question is, What should the goalkeeper do after making a great save?

At first the question sounds a bit like a non-question – the keeper has made the save, his work is done. But it’s not a question about good goalkeeping practice – “get to your feet quickly for rebounds or organise your defence.” Actually this is a question about something almost equally important: goalkeeping style.

Here’s a hypothetical example. A 25 yard pile driver, arcing towards the top corner of the goal, brilliantly and unbelievably tipped away by the goalkeeper, leaving him on the floor and the ball safely behind for a corner. The applause from the crowd still rings loud, and from the field the keeper can hear shouts of praise – the stuff every goalkeeper lives for. A few nearby defenders run up to give a friendly slap on the back. So what should the goalie do?

Not that I’ve made that many great saves in my goalkeeping life, but when I have I remember always feeling a bit fake about acting like what just happened was pretty much normal stuff for me. So, as often helps in times of need, I thought I’d turn to some of the heroes of goalkeeping to follow their example…

#1: the Gordon Banks “how the f*$k did I do that” approach

You’re probably only entitled to do this as a goalkeeper when you’ve pulled off a career-defining save like Banks’ “Save of the Century” against Pele in Mexico in 1970. Forward the video to around 0.50 seconds and watch: Banks is characteristically modest, getting up after the save and preparing for the Brazil corner, but those few seconds after Banks sits up dazed and finds the ball is somehow still outside the net are priceless.

#2: the Oliver Kahn “get in” dancing approach

Again, you really sort of have to have made an amazing save to break out into dance during open play in front of 80,000 spectators, but the save from Oliver Kahn at 1.26 of the video probably justifies it. It’s not exactly a dance, but it’s nice to see Kahn extend his elegance as a goalkeeper to his celebrations.

#3 the Peter Schmeichel get up and blame everybody approach

On a video more than 4 minutes long it’s hard to believe there aren’t more examples of this – but Schemiechel was a master of shrugging off the praise of a great save by immediately getting up and losing it with his defenders / midfielders / the referee / anybody within 40 yards. Check out the clip at 2.13 for a classic example.

#4 the Shay Given “all in a day’s work” approach

To be fair to Shay, he’s a goalkeeper who has clearly mastered a wide range of essential tactics of goalkeeping style relating to what to do after making a great save. The clip shown features some nice high fives with defenders (a favourite tactic of Shay), as well as some outright psych-himself-out celebrations. But also notice here Shay’s nice “no big deal for me” style at 0.25 (get up and dry your goalkeeper gloves on your towel in the back of the net) and 0.40 (examine your gloves and casually stretch your arms). The “all in a day’s work” approach is a particular favourite of many goalkeepers in the UK.  

#5 the Bruce Grobelaar “drunk bar walk” approach

Not for amateurs. Bruce’s wobbly strut at 0.12, turning briefly to scowl at the ground, can be successfully pulled off by only the few greats like Bruce Grobelaar. Your average Sunday league goalkeeper will just heighten suspicions that he is indeed still drunk from the night before.

#6 the Les Sealey “now I will kill somebody” approach
 
Annoyingly, this clip doesn’t properly show what Sealey does after this double save for Luton Town, but Sealey’s habit of homicidally threatening bad defenders at any opportunity is worth a mention. You can briefly see Les (also known as “Mr Angry”) disappear off the screen in this clip to collar some poor fullback… 

#7 unashamed-finger-pointing disco dancing – Gianluigi Buffon

Forward to 0.40. Italian goalkeeping passion. What can you say…