In any other walk of life it would be almost impossible to
have a successful recruitment policy if you could only select from 1.7% of your
potential targets. Imagine having to discard 98.3% of your candidates before
you even started, so instead of choosing a card from roughly two decks, you
could only choose one card out of two.
This 98.3% are not discarded because of a lack of skill or a
lack of ambition, they do not have behavioural problems or are violent in
nature and some are more than capable to be given a chance to at least attempt
a career.
Why do we ignore this majority? We discard this massive
majority because of their size, even before we know whether, despite their
height or lack of it, they can actually do a good job.
1.7% of kids will grow to be 6ft 3 or more. Even at this
height some of our category one academies will deem the child too small and
release them before any of his potential has been uncovered, he`ll be released
before they know his agility capacity, or any of his other physical components
that may well more than compensate for a lack of height.
Is there any such thing as the perfect goalkeeper? We all
have our ideals or philosophy on how we think goalkeepers should act in any
given situation, but is this ideal embodied in one goalkeeper or a mix up of
several? Are we guilty of trying to take attributes from the world’s best
keepers and then trying to squeeze all of these ideals into one mouldable
child? If so, is this something to feel guilty about?
If we are trying to achieve the above do we have to consider
that a 6ft 4 goalkeeper may never be able to produce the foot speed of a 5ft 10
goalkeeper? Can a 5ft 10 goalkeeper compensate for a lack of height by using
this advantage to get across his goal quicker allowing him to make the same
saves as his taller counterpart? As coaches are we guilty of being so stuck in
our ways that we try to make all goalkeepers in our charge the same, and do not
allow for their physical differences. Do we for example coach the taller
keepers to save with their feet and the smaller ones to collapse quickly?
Alternatively, do we coach the same techniques to all of them?
I am sure that the majority of coaches will have their
perfect goalkeepers standing 6ft 4. They will be agile and fast, be able to
play from the back and clear huge distances with their distribution. They will
dominate crosses and take charge of their back line. However, is this
realistic? How many goalkeepers in the current World Cup could you apply these
attributes too? The best keepers in the world maybe, but the rest of us mere
mortals? Are we always looking for the best keepers in the world, or just those
that can do a job for the level of team we coach?
Even when analysing this World Cup some of the best keepers
would not fit into the popular ideal as written above. Hugo lloris is regarded
as one of the best, he stands just over 6ft 1, if an Academy had tested him as
a child and it was revealed that this was going to be his height as an adult,
would he have been released and France denied the services of one of their best
ever goalkeepers?
Iker Casillas is undoubtedly the most successful
International goalkeeper in recent history. He has won 13 domestic trophies
with Real Madrid and been the only goalkeeper to have won three consecutive
major international tournaments, the European Cup in 2008 and 2012 and the
World Cup sandwiched in between in 2010. Casillas stands at just over 6ft!
Would he have been released at a young age had he been born British rather than
Spanish?
Victor Valdes has won 15 major trophies with Barcelona. He
is widely proclaimed as the best goalkeeper in the world at playing out from
the back, as well as being a great shot stopper and formidable in 1v1
situations. How tall is he? Just under 6ft. where would he be plying his trade
had he been assessed in the UK?
These are three examples but there are many. How many
potential world-class goalkeepers have been pushed aside in the UK over the
years?
If we were to ask any of our top clubs with category 1
Academies whether they would have these goalkeepers in their 1st
teams I am sure the answer would be yes. But how many future Valdes`s,
Casillas`s or Lloris`s have been rejected before they were given a proper
chance?
My main grievance is this question. Who makes this blueprint
of the ideal goalkeeper? Do we as goalkeeper coaches or do the Academy
Managers? I would say it is the latter. If we agree that the selection criteria
lies with the managers of our Academies then I have more questions for you. How
many of these people in charge were goalkeepers? How many have any
qualifications in goalkeeping? How many have ever taken a group of goalkeepers
for any length of time? Why are we as goalkeeper coaches who have to do double
the amount of coaching courses as our outfield colleagues allowing people with little
or no knowledge of our position dictate our selection criteria?
My opinion is this. Our Academies put most, if not all of
the importance on a potential goalkeeper’s height, and not his inherent
abilities that might make him into a top goalkeeper. Their opinion is that it
is easy to turn a tall child into a goalkeeper, that a tall kid with little
ability is a better prospect than an average height kid with bags of potential.
To finish, we need to select our future goalkeepers on how
well they can do their job. This should surely be the only fact that matters. I
have seen tall goalkeepers routed to their line when small keepers in the
Fabien Barthez mould are dominant. I have also seen tall children with quicker
feet than a lumbering small child. We should not judge whether a young
goalkeeper has the ability to make the grade, at whatever standard you coach,
by how tall he is, or how tall he is projected to be at a certain age. It
should be judged on how well he trains and more importantly how he performs in
matches.
As coaches we have to give our keepers the tools to succeed,
can we coach smaller keepers the abilities they need to make up for their
apparent disadvantage.
Let the people who have dedicated their football lives to
goalkeeping determine what the future of goalkeeping is going to look like. Are
we going to have a future of all 6ft 5 keepers the majority of which play in
goal because they were not good enough to play on pitch? Alternatively, are we
going to have a mix of all size of goalkeepers who all dreamed of playing in
goal from a young age and believe they were born to play there? I believe that
only with the latter will goalkeeping in the UK ever retain the reputation it
had in the eras of Shilton, Southall and Banks, none of whom would have made it
through todays selection process!
NEIL MOSS