From using realistic service to future-proofing skills, goalkeeper coach James Mayley breaks down the key elements to help develop your shot-stoppers.
Sessions for outfield players will typically touch on all aspects of the four-corner model of development – social, physical, psychological and technical/tactical.
Goalkeeper sessions, though, should work across all four of the following: decision-making, mental skills, athleticism and technical skills.
Sessions should also focus on one, or potentially multiple, elements of their specific role: defending the goal, defending space, contributing to build-up play and communication.
A key issue with traditional approaches to goalkeeper training is that coaches often prioritise the development of technical skills at the expense of other areas of goalkeeper performance.
Research has found that typical goalkeeper sessions may dedicate between 60 and 80% of training time to technical development, with only around 20% spent on activities which allow goalkeepers to develop their decision-making. Moreover, mental skills, despite their importance, may be overlooked completely.
A second problem identified in research is that service in training may not always reflect the shots or deliveries that goalkeepers face in a game.
For example, facing a high percentage of serves which are either volleys - where the keeper has a clear sight of the ball - or where the goalkeeper is aware of the service they will face removes the key environmental information that goalkeepers will experience in matches.
With these challenges in mind, how can goalkeeper coaches increase the effectiveness of their training?
A starting point may be to consider the Football Association’s practice spectrum for goalkeeping, which suggests sessions can be structured so that training is announced, unannounced or live.
While announced activities occasionally have their place - for example, as introductory activities when developing physical skills or with very early learners - there are a number of key drawbacks.
First, they strip the goalkeeper of the need to interpret key information regarding the shot, pass or cross - such as direction, height, movement or speed of the ball.
Developing perceptual cognitive skills is in itself a key skill that goalkeepers must develop.
They need to be able to interpret key information and make decisions regarding an appropriate response - for example, selecting the correct type of save or technique. This cannot be developed within announced sessions.
Moreover, the techniques that goalkeepers use and develop in announced sessions may vary significantly to the ones they will use in a game.
For example, when practising diving saves, if a goalkeeper knows the direction of service, they tend to lean or step in that direction before the serve comes in.
This is different to a match, in which they will need to transfer their weight from a balanced position towards the direction of the ball and, usually subconsciously, decide which type of dive to perform. Therefore, the skills and techniques they are developing with announced activities may not be transferable to match scenarios.
For these reasons, it may be beneficial to plan the majority of training sessions around unannounced or live activities. These allow more of the conditions under which goalkeepers will have to perform in matches.
Let’s now look at how coaches can maximise the effectiveness of their session designs.
First, when planning, it is important to consider the environmental demands, cues and distractions that are present in game contexts and decide how many of these to maintain or strip away, depending on the goals of the session and the developmental needs of the goalkeepers.
Include interference
Goalkeepers will be exposed to considerable perceptual interference from opposition players and team-mates when making in-game decisions and actions.
It may be important to maintain these - either through the use of mannequins to obscure the goalkeeper’s vision or by coaching the movement patterns of other players within the session to provide distractions, obscure the keeper’s line of sight and increase the number of decisions they have to make.
Such an approach can help ensure the skills a goalkeeper is developing are more transferable to match situations.
Having such levels of contextual interference within a session has also been proven to be an effective way of increasing long-term learning and skill acquisition - provided the goalkeepers are not overloaded by the information, which may be the case for very young or novice players.
Match the service
Another factor to consider is to match the service used in training to that which goalkeepers will face in a game.
This might include considering the distances the serve is coming in from, the pace and shape of the delivery, the part of the foot used and ensuring there is sufficient variability in the serves goalkeepers are facing.
Having sufficient variability and realism to service can ensure goalkeepers develop adaptable, individual and effective solutions to the game-realistic problems they are exposed to.
Consider before and after the action
Coaches may also consider the actions that goalkeepers perform both before and after the action they are practising and incorporate these into training.
For instance, in a crossing session, goalkeepers may be challenged to adapt their positioning or adjust to an attacker running down the wing.
They may also be required to focus on setting a counter attack if they catch the cross or dealing with second phases after a punch.
Think about intensity and speed
Another key factor to consider is the intensity of training sessions, both in terms of the amount of ball rolling and speed of play within the session.
Limiting feedback to critical moments or using quick, in-and-out coaching approaches may allow goalkeepers to get greater practice time within the session and also provide them with more autonomy over the decisions they are making.
Moreover, coaching the movement and decisions of players acting as outfielders can help ensure that the goalkeepers are being exposed to decisions and actions at a realistic match speed. This is important given the speed of decisions keepers will need to make in competitive environments.
Factor in current and future performance
Finally, there is the challenge of preparing goalkeepers, especially young ones, with the skills they need for both current and future performance.
For example, while goalkeepers at a younger age may be able to catch a high percentage of the shots they face, the higher up they play, the less likely they are to attempt to catch shots due to the increasing pace and movement on the ball.
Therefore, at younger ages, ’keepers may need to be trained to understand when and how to parry the ball, so that they are better prepared for the demands of the game they will face in the future.
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