Unlock Your Potential

A soccer goalkeeper is the hardest position to play in team sports.  Here's some online research to validate.  There are so many facets to the position that must be mastered and to do so requires sustained quality training.  A GK must make saves and those saves require fundamental skills that take repetitive application.  Good hands, quick feet, proper positioning, and stance are the basic building blocks that begin a Gk’s path.  These alone require many hours of proper instruction.  Then the need to dive, throw one’s self thru the air, the landing must be taught and be proper to avoid injury, this process alone is many sessions.  Then there are  1 v 1 situations where many keepers suffer injury due to improper technical execution.  Crosses into the box requires timing, proper decision processes, catching or tipping or punching, etc.  The ability to play with feet, the ability to distribute with a throw, a punt, a drop kick, etc., etc.  Let’s not forget the need for a GK to be a field commander and direct their defense in the heat of the match, the ability to read the patterns and adjust instantly and communicate it.
 
A goalkeeper needs the skills of a baseball catcher (courage), pitcher (throwing), infielder (barrier), and outfielder (depth perception), a football wide receiver (catching) and quarterback (reading the patterns of the game and quickly communicating positional adjustments for other players), a volleyball player (barrier and diving), an acrobat and/or gymnast (tumbling), the nerve of a football field goal kicker, the mobility of a tennis player, the ability to play with their feet like a soccer field player, and some being left out we’re sure.  Knowing all this, Very few GK’s are getting the necessary quantity and quality of training to really perform the position capably.  

The most prevalent training regimen offered by clubs for young American keepers is two nights a week (these are the lucky ones) in a group session for an hour.  They then supplement by finding personal training which can be spotty at best.  Personal GK trainers on many occasions just end up being servers of the ball, firing shots, serving crosses, and really do not have a progressive curriculum to achieve a level and then build from that level.  Haphazard sessions which are not efficient and only effective as long as the skills are constantly honed.  As illustrated, there are many skills that are necessary.   

So we at WGG ask, are you, or your young goalkeeper, getting the necessary training at the level required to reach potential?  Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of young GK's are not.