SocrManiac said:
Guys... As a keeper and a fan, I need to interject.
NBC did a fantastic piece on EPL goalkeepers. Covered was about how the near post commentary is pure myth created by analysts. A keeper doesn't want to allow a goal anywhere. The near post is just another part of the goal.
The keeper was positioned more or less correctly. She closed her eyes, got under the ball, and it went in. Simple as that. If she follows the ball to her glove she parries it away. If her strength and coordination are better it would have taken a perfect shot to get beyond her reach and still inside the post.
As someone who played also played keeper, my coach would have killed me for playing it the way she did.
She kind of took a middle ground then didn't cut off any angle.
Part of it was she jumped a bit the wrong way on the shot so she must have read in wrong, but if she was going to try and cut the angle for a cross she needed to move more toward the sideline and less up the field.
If she was just playing to stop the shot and be ready to shift back into the center of the net on a cross she was too far up field. Instead she leaves a very inviting gap near post, without any real benefit in cross prevention. She got to the ball, but only with her arms, because she was a step or two upfield beyond the ideal spot. That's a bad place to be trying to make a save with just an arm, the best case scenario is surrendering a corner, the more likely is that it either goes in as it did, or bounces into the box with you on the ground.
EDIT- rewatching the gif on the last page, a lot of it is the bad jump the wrong way. she's really only 1 step or so (maybe 1 too far up field and 1 too far in-field depending on preference) from ideal position, but then she does that stupid jumping thing before the shot taking her a bit farther out, and wrongfooting her. She could have made a better play on it from her original positon.
TL
R- her positioning was actually decent if not ideal, then she broke wrong for some reason and botched it.