So, not a lot to talk about these days. I thought it might be fun to explore goalkeeping a bit.
One topic near and dear to my heart is the crucifixion applied to a goalkeeper for conceding a near post goal. As far as I can tell, this is purely a media creation. I loved when Kasper Schmeichel spoke out on it a few years ago. The only place I can find it is on Instagram here.
First and foremost, like Kasper says, a keeper doesn't want to be beaten anywhere. It doesn't matter where it is.
At high levels, goalkeepers must know the tendencies of their opponents and use that knowledge to cheat their coverage. The goal is enormous: 8' x 24'. The ball is tiny by comparison- less than 9" in diameter- and players can regularly hit it 80+ MPH. Also, it weighs a pound. Think about that for a second. A baseball weighs six ounces. At 80MPH, it hurts like hell. You may think of a soccer ball as softer, but at a full pound and fully inflated, I don't think you're going to consider it soft when it's rocketing off your face. We'll save the strength required to deflect that ball at the full extension of the arm or the impact absorption required to catch it later... Add the movement of the modern ball and you get my second favorite ("He really should have held that.").
So, goal is big, ball is small, and ball is a force to be reckoned with.
As we all know, a goalkeeper needs to choose a place to stand that minimizes the amount of area a player has to shoot at. I'm sure we all learned about angles from both sides, so I won't bore folks with it here. At a young age, you simply learn to pick the correct spot and leave it at that. Trying to remember what player prefers which foot (or even identifying the attacker) doesn't come until later, and at that point you need to have some level of familiarity through either scouting or just repetition. Of course, while a goalkeeper is learning the strikers, the strikers are learning the goalkeepers, so there's no small cat and mouse game going on. For the sake of simplicity, we're going to assume that a goalkeeper knows what foot the attacker prefers.
Now, nitpicking in front of the goal is stupid. Choosing what counts as near post or far post isn't worth the time, so we're going to assume some steep angles, as indicated below. This is where the commentary teams get really riled up on near post goals. I am going to talk in terms of the goalkeeper's viewpoint, not the attacker (because, really, fuck prima-donna strikers).
This shouldn't come as a shock as I've lead up to it, but in these areas, your angle is dependent on the foot a striker prefers. We'll skip opposites for now (a left footer from the right side). The best option there really is near post, and a keeper should be cheating that way. The far post is away from the natural spin of the ball. Conversely, a right footed attacker is far more dangerous from the right (See "Del Piero Zone" for details) if they can get the ball onto that foot. Fortunately, that's where the defending help should be coming from, but we're going to assume our defenders are beaten and the striker can choose his foot. How do you pick your angle?
If the shots are straight and driven, the ball will arrive at the near post a hell of a lot faster. A shot taken from the corner of the six yard box only has half as far to travel.That's not trivial when it comes to reaction times. In order to truly cover that, you have to cheat way over. Now the far post of the goal is wide open. But, it gets worse...
Because of the natural curl of the shot, the far post of the goal expands. Depending on the amount of spin the striker can apply, he can start his shot feet or even yards off the far post, totally bypassing the goalkeeper.
What you'll see is goalkeepers making a move as the attacker's plant foot lands. Sometimes you can read where it's going, sometimes you can't. Good strikers will even disguise it, leaving you totally lost.
I'm going to use Buffon a lot if I do a bunch of these. No surprise, he plays for my favorite team and he's the best to ever play the game. What's given him his endurance is this reading of the strikers (and the play in general with an ability to have his team prevent shots, but we'll get to that at a later time).
I apologize for the potato quality, but I love this frame:
He's already diving to his left. The ball hasn't left the striker's foot. Here's the video. Now, in fairness, the striker only had one option- near post. He was being closed down and didn't have time. This becomes an easy read and a nice source of the spectacular. That said...
I've talked about it elsewhere, but one other nugget I've given strikers over the years is one of the best short range shots to take is hard and at the goalkeeper's head. A keeper can spring up faster than he can get down (gravity is so damn slow), so we tend to stay low with our arms to either side of our legs. The spot between a keeper's foot and a short dive is incredibly vulnerable because it's difficult to get to- that's what the striker above chose. When we cheat down to cover that, we can't get our arms up to head level by the time a shot goes by. We tend to dip our knees as a shot is taken, so a hard blast right at the head has a great chance of finding the back of the net. If a shot had been hit with that pace at Buffon's head would he have gotten it? Probably not.
So, in general, the way I always picked was my spot in a situation where a striker had some time was based on the type of player they were. A pure power striker would have me cheating near post. A finesse striker that typically chose placement over power would have me more central. Either way, it's a crapshoot, a judgement call, and we're pissed no matter what if it goes in. Near post doesn't make it somehow worse, at least until we need to fight the pundit that blamed us for not saving a defender's ass yet again...
One topic near and dear to my heart is the crucifixion applied to a goalkeeper for conceding a near post goal. As far as I can tell, this is purely a media creation. I loved when Kasper Schmeichel spoke out on it a few years ago. The only place I can find it is on Instagram here.
First and foremost, like Kasper says, a keeper doesn't want to be beaten anywhere. It doesn't matter where it is.
At high levels, goalkeepers must know the tendencies of their opponents and use that knowledge to cheat their coverage. The goal is enormous: 8' x 24'. The ball is tiny by comparison- less than 9" in diameter- and players can regularly hit it 80+ MPH. Also, it weighs a pound. Think about that for a second. A baseball weighs six ounces. At 80MPH, it hurts like hell. You may think of a soccer ball as softer, but at a full pound and fully inflated, I don't think you're going to consider it soft when it's rocketing off your face. We'll save the strength required to deflect that ball at the full extension of the arm or the impact absorption required to catch it later... Add the movement of the modern ball and you get my second favorite ("He really should have held that.").
So, goal is big, ball is small, and ball is a force to be reckoned with.
As we all know, a goalkeeper needs to choose a place to stand that minimizes the amount of area a player has to shoot at. I'm sure we all learned about angles from both sides, so I won't bore folks with it here. At a young age, you simply learn to pick the correct spot and leave it at that. Trying to remember what player prefers which foot (or even identifying the attacker) doesn't come until later, and at that point you need to have some level of familiarity through either scouting or just repetition. Of course, while a goalkeeper is learning the strikers, the strikers are learning the goalkeepers, so there's no small cat and mouse game going on. For the sake of simplicity, we're going to assume that a goalkeeper knows what foot the attacker prefers.
Now, nitpicking in front of the goal is stupid. Choosing what counts as near post or far post isn't worth the time, so we're going to assume some steep angles, as indicated below. This is where the commentary teams get really riled up on near post goals. I am going to talk in terms of the goalkeeper's viewpoint, not the attacker (because, really, fuck prima-donna strikers).
This shouldn't come as a shock as I've lead up to it, but in these areas, your angle is dependent on the foot a striker prefers. We'll skip opposites for now (a left footer from the right side). The best option there really is near post, and a keeper should be cheating that way. The far post is away from the natural spin of the ball. Conversely, a right footed attacker is far more dangerous from the right (See "Del Piero Zone" for details) if they can get the ball onto that foot. Fortunately, that's where the defending help should be coming from, but we're going to assume our defenders are beaten and the striker can choose his foot. How do you pick your angle?
If the shots are straight and driven, the ball will arrive at the near post a hell of a lot faster. A shot taken from the corner of the six yard box only has half as far to travel.That's not trivial when it comes to reaction times. In order to truly cover that, you have to cheat way over. Now the far post of the goal is wide open. But, it gets worse...
Because of the natural curl of the shot, the far post of the goal expands. Depending on the amount of spin the striker can apply, he can start his shot feet or even yards off the far post, totally bypassing the goalkeeper.
What you'll see is goalkeepers making a move as the attacker's plant foot lands. Sometimes you can read where it's going, sometimes you can't. Good strikers will even disguise it, leaving you totally lost.
I'm going to use Buffon a lot if I do a bunch of these. No surprise, he plays for my favorite team and he's the best to ever play the game. What's given him his endurance is this reading of the strikers (and the play in general with an ability to have his team prevent shots, but we'll get to that at a later time).
I apologize for the potato quality, but I love this frame:
He's already diving to his left. The ball hasn't left the striker's foot. Here's the video. Now, in fairness, the striker only had one option- near post. He was being closed down and didn't have time. This becomes an easy read and a nice source of the spectacular. That said...
I've talked about it elsewhere, but one other nugget I've given strikers over the years is one of the best short range shots to take is hard and at the goalkeeper's head. A keeper can spring up faster than he can get down (gravity is so damn slow), so we tend to stay low with our arms to either side of our legs. The spot between a keeper's foot and a short dive is incredibly vulnerable because it's difficult to get to- that's what the striker above chose. When we cheat down to cover that, we can't get our arms up to head level by the time a shot goes by. We tend to dip our knees as a shot is taken, so a hard blast right at the head has a great chance of finding the back of the net. If a shot had been hit with that pace at Buffon's head would he have gotten it? Probably not.
So, in general, the way I always picked was my spot in a situation where a striker had some time was based on the type of player they were. A pure power striker would have me cheating near post. A finesse striker that typically chose placement over power would have me more central. Either way, it's a crapshoot, a judgement call, and we're pissed no matter what if it goes in. Near post doesn't make it somehow worse, at least until we need to fight the pundit that blamed us for not saving a defender's ass yet again...
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