Some people say goalkeepers are crazy, but to me they are not crazy, they’re different. Firstly a goalkeeper is the only player that can use his hands, he wears a different kit to those that are even on his own team, he has a specially marked area that is his. I want to try and look at what makes goalkeepers special and what makes them ticks. I am a goalkeeper myself and although I will never reach a particularly high standard I have found that the standards and grounds may change but on the whole the theory behind it doesn’t.
Ask any goalkeeper how they became one and you will get a common reply ‘by accident’. Football is our national game and I schools at lunch and break many games of football break out. Of course when you are young (for some this never leaves you) you want the glory, you want the fame and you want the goals. You want to be the next Thierry Henry or Ian Wright. How many children at the ages of 5 or 6 want to be the next David Seaman? Not many. In my case I went in goal for a few simple reasons, firstly I love football, back then it was a major part of my life and even today it still is. Secondly I wanted to be in the school team, I wanted to wear the kit, I wanted time off school to go and play, I wanted to avoid cross-country! At the time I didn’t have the pace or the stamina to be a forward and really defence was a bit hard too. So I went in goal. It is a ready-made spot for those that can’t fun fast enough or for long periods of time. No one else wanted to go in goal, so there I was aged 6 in goal for my school team. Little did I know then but it was the start of a life long obsession of mine and perhaps at times life saving.
Some goalkeepers aren’t so lucky; they didn’t get the choice. I remember reading ‘Goalkeepers are Different’ by Brian Glanville; in fact the first sentence of this is a quote from it. When you are young there are books that you read over and over well this was mine. The book is the inspiration for this. I know it is a work of fiction but Ronnie Blake went in goal because the goalkeeper for his team got injured one game and he went in and did a job. This scenario I am sure is played out many times a season and probably is true for some of the world’s best. For most there is never a point when you become recognised as a goalkeeper; it is just assumed.
Now I want to look at the role of the keeper and try and find some characteristics that are important to the job.
When you are in goal you are alone. This is a feeling that is quite hard to describe and can’t be fully understood until you have experienced it. Until you have stood on a Sunday morning on a pathetic excuse for a pitch. The mud up to your ankles, the puddles of water collecting all around your penalty area and the biting wind cutting straight through you. All this time the play is down the other end, or perhaps more pertinently in the midfield. You watch the other field players run around keeping warm and then you realise that you can’t move your fingers and if you did have a shot to save your arm would probably fall off first!
I think that Sunday morning football is a good place to start in my assessment. I mentioned before about wanting to wear the kit. Well that is an illusion in itself. All the other ten players and however, many substitutes get the kit; they get the shiny blue tops with black shorts and blue and black socks. Somehow whenever a manager orders a kit either they forget the keeper or it costs too much for them and they think that the kid that turns up every 2 months is more deserving of a kit than the loyal custodian between the sticks. So it is up to the goalkeeper to buy his own kit, however, there are even restrictions on this. Up until very recently he wasn’t allowed to wear the kit of a team, so my Arsenal keepers top would suffice. So he had to buy a kit with no team affiliations or sponsors on it. This usually meant her wore green. Not only did this in a way segregate him from his team but in a weird way made him identify more with his opposite number. The idea of a ‘Goalkeepers Union’ is something we hear about regularly but it comes as no surprise that they are the closest group of players that aren’t bound by team associations. Young keepers also needed to buy gloves and even goalkeeping trousers.
At this level not many people care about the warm up for outfield players, let alone goalkeepers. Usually the warm up was a quick run, a few stretches and then back to rain shots in on the keeper. Not exactly the best way to do it. Mainly because the amount of shots that went wide was large plus I am not going to over exert myself too much before a game. What is needed is someone just to practice crosses and warm up your hands with shots close into the body. Goalkeepers are misunderstood but more on that later
So there you are in all your own kit standing on the pitch with nothing to do. If you think about a normal football game how much of it is actually played in and around the penalty area? Very little. Football is played in No Man’s Land or the midfield, as it is also known. There is a hell of a lot of time for a keeper to think during a game, perhaps there is too much. I remember replaying every little bit of action in my head over and over again. Sometimes this is good as you can use it to improve but more often it would be used to brood over mistakes.
Being able to use your hands is obviously a big difference but it means that your approach to the game has to be so much different and not many people can comprehend this.
Those that chose to make a career out of goalkeeping must able to survive on their own. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they must be loners because they are part of a team but they need to be detached.
Goalkeepers to a certain extent are perverse; the aim of football is to score goals, the aim of a goalkeeper is to stop this from happening. He must get some enjoyment from stopping people from experiencing what is commonly described as ‘the best feeling in the world’. I can tell you that there is a certain enjoyment in doing this. When a striker is bearing down on goal, he expects to score. In fact the whole ground expects him to score, that is everyone except the keeper. If the keeper saves it or blocks it away for a corner then he has proved everyone wrong. It was true in my case, as I have said that I was a failed outfield player. I was fat and couldn’t run. This spurned me on though. When you are young not only do you want the glory but also you are expected to go out and get it. Parents want the best for you and being a goalkeeper isn’t perceived to be the best position on the pitch. Schoolmasters want to coach the next Wayne Rooney not the next Paul Robinson. This is because football to most people is about the 10 other players in the team.
Being solid, dependable and trustworthiness are three of the most important characteristics that you need. In goal there is fine line between success and failure. In fact it is the width of the goal line and the length of the distance between the two posts. With that margin for error you need to be solid. You need to be stoic in a way. You are trying to prevent bad things happening for the team. You can’t be someone who is going to break down when things start to go wrong. Trust is important because when you call to come for a cross your defence needs to trust your judgment and believe that you will get there. They need to have confidence in you to make up for their mistakes. Outfield players can make mistakes and more often that not they can get back and recover. Their touch might be too heavy and they might present the ball to an opposition player but usually they have 30 or 40 yards to make up for it. Keepers have about 5 yards to make up for their mistakes and that is if they are lucky. It is generally expected that when a keeper makes a mistake it will result in a goal.
Goalkeepers are more than the last line of defence though, they are also the first line of attack. Nevertheless they rarely get the credit for this being as they are so far away from the other net. They create the platform that allows others to go on and do the eye catching things. In real life I have noticed that it is often goalkeepers and to a lesser extent defenders that are the ones you can talk to and they will give you advice. Strikers are often more selfish. Fair enough they have to be but it is interesting how much an affect a position in a sport has on a personality. Goalkeepers are dependable and down to earth people. Very few of them go off the rails. Paul Merson and George Best let alcohol among other things get the better of them, Michael Owen and Eidur Gudjohnsen succumbed to gambling. Howe many keepers hit the news for such events? I actually can’t think of any in modern times but am willing to be corrected.
There is one question I usually get asked after a game and it is ‘How? How can you do those things that you do without getting scared?’ Of course I am talking about when a goalkeeper throws himself at the feet of an on rushing striker or hurling your body in the way of a thunderbolt. The truth is that you don’t think. You have spent too long thinking when the play has been down the other end. When you are called into action nothing goes through for mind. Well that is except one thing, the ball and how to get it in your arms or away. Keepers do what they have to do like anyone else doing a job. It is only after a game when you think about what you did that you think ‘I could have got severely hurt there’. You think about it for a while then you forget it because you know in the next game you will have to do more of the same and if you think about it too much you just wont do it.
So goalkeepers have to be able to survive on their own, they must be solid, dependable, trustworthy, a bit perverse, they are protectors and they provide a base for the attackers to attack on also they must not think too much about what they are required to do. However, there is one more trait they need and that is selflessness.
The number one on the back of the shirt doesn’t mean they will get all the attention; in fact it is quite the opposite. Consider a game that is locked at 0-0 with 5 minutes to go. One side has been totally on top but has been thwarted time after time by the heroic keeping. If the final whistle was to go then he would be a hero. However, in the last minute the striker scuffs a shot in and they win 1-0. Who will get the headlines? The man-of-the-match champagne? Exactly the striker. Here are a few facts
Ø England, Wales and Northern Ireland's most capped players are all goalkeepers, namely Peter Shilton (125), Neville Southall (91) and Pat Jennings (119).
Ø Only two Goalkeepers have won the PFA Player of the Year Award: Pat Jennings (Tottenham Hotspur, 1976) and Peter Shilton (Nottingham Forest, 1978).
Ø Only one goalkeeper has ever won the PFA Young Player of the Year - Mervyn Day of West Ham United, who won the award back in 1975.
Ø Moscow Dynamo's Lev Yashin is the only goalkeeper to win the European Footballer of the Year Award, doing so in 1963.
Ø No goalkeeper has ever won the FIFA World Player Of The Year Award
Ø In 1979 Trevor Francis became the first £1,000,000 footballer. David Seaman had to wait until 1990 to become the first goalkeeper to break the barrier.
Goalkeepers don’t get the praise they deserve but in a world where so much emphasis is placed on tangible and visible success it is no surprise. The position has always been one that isn’t quite understood and is often shrouded with mystery. I hope I have proved that goalkeepers aren’t crazy; they are just different.
Ask any goalkeeper how they became one and you will get a common reply ‘by accident’. Football is our national game and I schools at lunch and break many games of football break out. Of course when you are young (for some this never leaves you) you want the glory, you want the fame and you want the goals. You want to be the next Thierry Henry or Ian Wright. How many children at the ages of 5 or 6 want to be the next David Seaman? Not many. In my case I went in goal for a few simple reasons, firstly I love football, back then it was a major part of my life and even today it still is. Secondly I wanted to be in the school team, I wanted to wear the kit, I wanted time off school to go and play, I wanted to avoid cross-country! At the time I didn’t have the pace or the stamina to be a forward and really defence was a bit hard too. So I went in goal. It is a ready-made spot for those that can’t fun fast enough or for long periods of time. No one else wanted to go in goal, so there I was aged 6 in goal for my school team. Little did I know then but it was the start of a life long obsession of mine and perhaps at times life saving.
Some goalkeepers aren’t so lucky; they didn’t get the choice. I remember reading ‘Goalkeepers are Different’ by Brian Glanville; in fact the first sentence of this is a quote from it. When you are young there are books that you read over and over well this was mine. The book is the inspiration for this. I know it is a work of fiction but Ronnie Blake went in goal because the goalkeeper for his team got injured one game and he went in and did a job. This scenario I am sure is played out many times a season and probably is true for some of the world’s best. For most there is never a point when you become recognised as a goalkeeper; it is just assumed.
Now I want to look at the role of the keeper and try and find some characteristics that are important to the job.
When you are in goal you are alone. This is a feeling that is quite hard to describe and can’t be fully understood until you have experienced it. Until you have stood on a Sunday morning on a pathetic excuse for a pitch. The mud up to your ankles, the puddles of water collecting all around your penalty area and the biting wind cutting straight through you. All this time the play is down the other end, or perhaps more pertinently in the midfield. You watch the other field players run around keeping warm and then you realise that you can’t move your fingers and if you did have a shot to save your arm would probably fall off first!
I think that Sunday morning football is a good place to start in my assessment. I mentioned before about wanting to wear the kit. Well that is an illusion in itself. All the other ten players and however, many substitutes get the kit; they get the shiny blue tops with black shorts and blue and black socks. Somehow whenever a manager orders a kit either they forget the keeper or it costs too much for them and they think that the kid that turns up every 2 months is more deserving of a kit than the loyal custodian between the sticks. So it is up to the goalkeeper to buy his own kit, however, there are even restrictions on this. Up until very recently he wasn’t allowed to wear the kit of a team, so my Arsenal keepers top would suffice. So he had to buy a kit with no team affiliations or sponsors on it. This usually meant her wore green. Not only did this in a way segregate him from his team but in a weird way made him identify more with his opposite number. The idea of a ‘Goalkeepers Union’ is something we hear about regularly but it comes as no surprise that they are the closest group of players that aren’t bound by team associations. Young keepers also needed to buy gloves and even goalkeeping trousers.
At this level not many people care about the warm up for outfield players, let alone goalkeepers. Usually the warm up was a quick run, a few stretches and then back to rain shots in on the keeper. Not exactly the best way to do it. Mainly because the amount of shots that went wide was large plus I am not going to over exert myself too much before a game. What is needed is someone just to practice crosses and warm up your hands with shots close into the body. Goalkeepers are misunderstood but more on that later
So there you are in all your own kit standing on the pitch with nothing to do. If you think about a normal football game how much of it is actually played in and around the penalty area? Very little. Football is played in No Man’s Land or the midfield, as it is also known. There is a hell of a lot of time for a keeper to think during a game, perhaps there is too much. I remember replaying every little bit of action in my head over and over again. Sometimes this is good as you can use it to improve but more often it would be used to brood over mistakes.
Being able to use your hands is obviously a big difference but it means that your approach to the game has to be so much different and not many people can comprehend this.
Those that chose to make a career out of goalkeeping must able to survive on their own. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they must be loners because they are part of a team but they need to be detached.
Goalkeepers to a certain extent are perverse; the aim of football is to score goals, the aim of a goalkeeper is to stop this from happening. He must get some enjoyment from stopping people from experiencing what is commonly described as ‘the best feeling in the world’. I can tell you that there is a certain enjoyment in doing this. When a striker is bearing down on goal, he expects to score. In fact the whole ground expects him to score, that is everyone except the keeper. If the keeper saves it or blocks it away for a corner then he has proved everyone wrong. It was true in my case, as I have said that I was a failed outfield player. I was fat and couldn’t run. This spurned me on though. When you are young not only do you want the glory but also you are expected to go out and get it. Parents want the best for you and being a goalkeeper isn’t perceived to be the best position on the pitch. Schoolmasters want to coach the next Wayne Rooney not the next Paul Robinson. This is because football to most people is about the 10 other players in the team.
Being solid, dependable and trustworthiness are three of the most important characteristics that you need. In goal there is fine line between success and failure. In fact it is the width of the goal line and the length of the distance between the two posts. With that margin for error you need to be solid. You need to be stoic in a way. You are trying to prevent bad things happening for the team. You can’t be someone who is going to break down when things start to go wrong. Trust is important because when you call to come for a cross your defence needs to trust your judgment and believe that you will get there. They need to have confidence in you to make up for their mistakes. Outfield players can make mistakes and more often that not they can get back and recover. Their touch might be too heavy and they might present the ball to an opposition player but usually they have 30 or 40 yards to make up for it. Keepers have about 5 yards to make up for their mistakes and that is if they are lucky. It is generally expected that when a keeper makes a mistake it will result in a goal.
Goalkeepers are more than the last line of defence though, they are also the first line of attack. Nevertheless they rarely get the credit for this being as they are so far away from the other net. They create the platform that allows others to go on and do the eye catching things. In real life I have noticed that it is often goalkeepers and to a lesser extent defenders that are the ones you can talk to and they will give you advice. Strikers are often more selfish. Fair enough they have to be but it is interesting how much an affect a position in a sport has on a personality. Goalkeepers are dependable and down to earth people. Very few of them go off the rails. Paul Merson and George Best let alcohol among other things get the better of them, Michael Owen and Eidur Gudjohnsen succumbed to gambling. Howe many keepers hit the news for such events? I actually can’t think of any in modern times but am willing to be corrected.
There is one question I usually get asked after a game and it is ‘How? How can you do those things that you do without getting scared?’ Of course I am talking about when a goalkeeper throws himself at the feet of an on rushing striker or hurling your body in the way of a thunderbolt. The truth is that you don’t think. You have spent too long thinking when the play has been down the other end. When you are called into action nothing goes through for mind. Well that is except one thing, the ball and how to get it in your arms or away. Keepers do what they have to do like anyone else doing a job. It is only after a game when you think about what you did that you think ‘I could have got severely hurt there’. You think about it for a while then you forget it because you know in the next game you will have to do more of the same and if you think about it too much you just wont do it.
So goalkeepers have to be able to survive on their own, they must be solid, dependable, trustworthy, a bit perverse, they are protectors and they provide a base for the attackers to attack on also they must not think too much about what they are required to do. However, there is one more trait they need and that is selflessness.
The number one on the back of the shirt doesn’t mean they will get all the attention; in fact it is quite the opposite. Consider a game that is locked at 0-0 with 5 minutes to go. One side has been totally on top but has been thwarted time after time by the heroic keeping. If the final whistle was to go then he would be a hero. However, in the last minute the striker scuffs a shot in and they win 1-0. Who will get the headlines? The man-of-the-match champagne? Exactly the striker. Here are a few facts
Ø England, Wales and Northern Ireland's most capped players are all goalkeepers, namely Peter Shilton (125), Neville Southall (91) and Pat Jennings (119).
Ø Only two Goalkeepers have won the PFA Player of the Year Award: Pat Jennings (Tottenham Hotspur, 1976) and Peter Shilton (Nottingham Forest, 1978).
Ø Only one goalkeeper has ever won the PFA Young Player of the Year - Mervyn Day of West Ham United, who won the award back in 1975.
Ø Moscow Dynamo's Lev Yashin is the only goalkeeper to win the European Footballer of the Year Award, doing so in 1963.
Ø No goalkeeper has ever won the FIFA World Player Of The Year Award
Ø In 1979 Trevor Francis became the first £1,000,000 footballer. David Seaman had to wait until 1990 to become the first goalkeeper to break the barrier.
Goalkeepers don’t get the praise they deserve but in a world where so much emphasis is placed on tangible and visible success it is no surprise. The position has always been one that isn’t quite understood and is often shrouded with mystery. I hope I have proved that goalkeepers aren’t crazy; they are just different.
