Penalty tips: for the keeper

Penalty shootouts put your goalkeeper front and centre.

Here’s some advice you can offer before they position themselves between the sticks for the big event.

TIME YOUR DIVE

Remember what you’ve worked on in training and assess the optimum time to dive in order to save a penalty. Diving too early will present the player striking the ball with an advantage, as they will see what part of the goal has opened up. Diving too late and the goalkeeper won’t give themselves enough of a chance to get to the ball.

STAND OFF-CENTRE

By standing slightly off-centre from the middle of the goal, the keeper can influence the penalty taker to direct the kick to the side of the goal that has more space. If this positioning is practised, the goalkeeper may be able to influence the kick direction without the penalty taker even realising.

USE THE RIGHT INFO

The most reliable information for anticipating kick direction emerges just before the player contacts the ball, meaning the final 400 milliseconds before contact with the ball. Goalkeepers should ignore early information, such as the direction of run-up, and make a split-second decision on where the ball is going just as it is struck.

BE DECISIVE

While your goalkeepers are ideally not deciding where to dive until a split second before the ball has been struck, there can still be a multitude of thoughts in their head prior to this moment that can affect performance. Tell your keepers to trust their instincts and go in the direction they first decide. Indecisiveness could leave them ineffectively rooted to their starting spot.

THINK POSITIVE

Get your goalkeepers to picture past sporting successes or past examples of when they have saved penalties. You are looking to develop feelings of confidence, belief and strength in your keeper’s mind and get them to focus on performing in the shootout rather than being affected by nerves.

KNOW WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK

Save them all, or save none, your team is behind you and simply appreciative of you doing the job in the first place. Whatever happens, we learn from it.