David Seaman side step special

Not everyone can say they’ve been coached by this legend!

In this short clip, you can see another simple warm up to get the feet moving and get your eye in.

Make sure not to clip his or cross feet while sidestepping. You don’t want to trip yourself up and look like a bit of a div!
A goalkeeper should glide across their area quick and and always be ready for someone to pull the trigger at any moment. The sidestep will allow you to keep your eye on the ball as well as ‘get set’ quickly.

The modern GK will need to be comfortable with the ball at their feet. I believe that we should be involved in outfield drills, particularly in ball possession sessions. The coach expects us to sweep up behind the defence and also be the spare player when in possession. But most coaches don’t involve their goalkeepers in their passing and possession exercises!! Baffles me!!

Poor service starves the practise

I’ve been coached by some amazing goalkeeper coaches. They’ve helped me physically, mentally & of course technically. But I’ve also come across very poor coaches.

I believe that, as a top GK coach, you need to be able to create game like situations through your service. What is the point in preparing a session to work on a certain technique if you can’t serve the ball to bring out that technique. That’s why ‘poor feeding starves the practise’. This is where we see a difference in outfield coaching and goalkeeping coaching. If I’m coaching outfield players, I can use a player to demo techniques or use players in a phase of play etc. Yes, I can use other goalkeepers to serve the ball (which will help their kicking) and it is a good idea to use GK’s sometimes, but in general, I will have to have good service as a one to one coach.

Sometimes it’s very difficult to recreate a certain shot or cross consistently. In this video clip, you can see the use of Globas Eurogoal. This machine will serve the ball consistently in whatever way you ask it to. A revolutionary machine, I agree, it’s great for enforcing a ‘top-hand save’ and ‘out swinging crosses’ etc, but I also believe service from the coaches are still vital as it’s game realism.

Personally, I might use the machine for top hand saves or saves that are in a very specific area of the goal but in general, coaches service brings decision making and is more realistic.

Goalkeepers don’t work as hard as outfield players

How many times do you turn up to a grassroots game and there’s no goalkeeper? Or some kid is in a huff because they have to go in goals? The goalkeeper position has been neglected and I feel we need to slap a bit of make up on it and make it more attractive!!

Even at my club Arsenal-one of the best women’s club in Europe and a club that should be striving because of past success. We still struggle to recruit top level Goalkeepers.

I can verify that we work just as hard, if not harder than other players. Personally, I will train with outfield players and then go and do extra goalkeeping specific training. The new goalkeeper needs to be just as good with their feet as the outfield players as well as all the other jobs expected of us.

In this session you will see an element of:

Fitness
Agility
Power
quick feet
decision making (when to catch, when to parry)
handshapes

Watch Ben Foster’s feet. What he lacks in height….he makes up for in speed.