Coaching Professional Goalkeepers

•  Flexibility 

When working with senior goalkeepers they will have had time to develop their own believes on goalkeeping, coaching and what they think they need to stay at their best.  

I love theses times, the opportunities to learn from a new goalkeeper and even better, the chance to make a senior goalkeeper better is what the job is all about. During the 2006/07 season Norwich City had 5 different goalkeepers play in the first team, 4 of whom came in on loan, I have never learnt so much in such a short time. 

My knowledge of goalkeeper coaching benefited a great deal and even better then that I learnt how to be flexible in my coaching. In the many sessions and discussions we had there were things I agreed with and things disagreed with, I saw opportunities for me to be better and opportunities to make the goalkeepers better.  The key was finding a way through talk and practices to convince senior goalkeepers who have developed ideas about what they need that they in fact could do things better. Its not a five minute job and is dangerous to do it quickly. 

• Development and preparation

 Short term and long term plan, Goalkeepers don’t just train there is also games to consider. When working with goalkeepers who are playing regularly in games with high stakes we need two programs of work, one for the long term development goals of the keeper and a second program considering the preparation for the next game. 

• Building confidence

 Obvious statement but hugely important when planning and I will use this example to get my point across.

 Whilst at Norwich we signed a first year scholar from another club, he was very raw in terms of technical ability and had all the physical attributes you would look for in a top class goalkeeper.  

We went to work straight away, focusing on the less strong areas of his game one of which was kicking with his left foot. Over and over and over again we practiced, with slight improvement every time, however it was still an area that caused slight anxiety for the keeper and was inconsistent. One day he was ‘ok’ and the next was awful so it creates a dilemma from a coaching point of view, do we practice left foot kicking the day before a game?

In this case I say no and the reason for that is the confidence issues surrounding his left foot kicking. I weighted up the positives and choose not to practice the day before a game so that his confidence was higher at kick off. 

This may be different for other keepers so I urge you to judge the individual characters you are working with but development v’s confidence must always be considered. 

Just for your info the left foot kicking took about 3 months then one day it just happened. On the Monday it was as inconsistent as ever and on the Wednesday it just happened, he kicked every ball where is should have gone and he continued to do it everyday and in every game. 

• Joint program planning

 As I mentioned previously most senior goalkeepers will have their own opinions on goalkeeping and what they need to do to stay at their best. With this in mind it is important that we speak openly with our goalkeepers about our training programs. We must understand them and what they think they should be better at and then we can help them even more.  

• Know what the manager or coach of the team expects of the goalkeeper.