East Meadow Soccer Club - Field Information

Field play important for young keepers

By Tim Mulqueen

When goalkeepers reach their midteens and are serious about the position, they’ll be competing for a starting spot on their club team. Some may be trying out for state or regional teams -- or even the national team program. Goalkeepers who have mastered most aspects of the position may find themselves losing out to keepers who have better foot skills. Keepers with superior foot skills expand their team's options and opportunities in numerous ways.

Goalkeepers can’t pick the ball up with their hands when it’s passed back to them by a teammate; therefore, foot skills make all the difference.

If keepers can confidently use their feet to deal with back passes, they give their defenders a valuable option when the defenders are under pressure. To do this, keepers must be able to settle the ball with either foot and pass the ball over various distances with precision. To illustrate how important foot skills have become, consider this: Goalkeepers touched the ball with their feet more times per game during the 2010 World Cup than during any previous World Cup, seven more times per game.

A keeper with limited foot skills will turn too many goal kicks and punts into 50-50 balls, meaning that the opponent has as much of a chance to get the ball as the keeper’s teammate does. Goal kicks are often the first point of a team’s attack, and having a field player rather than a keeper take a goal kick means giving up a numerical advantage in the field. Punting the ball isn’t just a matter of blasting it upfield. The trajectory of the ball can give forwards an advantage. For example, a well-aimed low punt can find a wide player who has slipped away from her marker.

The goalkeepers who exhibit exceptional foot skills at the college level and beyond are most likely the ones who didn’t specialize in the position too early. In fact, some of the greatest goalkeepers played in the field as well as in goal throughout their youth careers.

U.S. national team goalkeepers Tony Meola and Tim Howard were both center forwards in high school. That experience helped them in their ability to read the game and to use their feet. Meola’s feet in goal were those of a field player. He was proficient with both his right and left foot, and his skill with his feet played a key role in how his teams played the ball out of the back.

Hope Solo, who won the Olympic gold medal with the U.S. women’s soccer team in 2008, scored 109 goals as a forward in high school. She was a Parade All-American selection twice as a field player. Brad Guzan was a consistent starter in MLS at a younger age than any previous keeper (before he moved to the English Premier League). He played in the field for his youth club, the Chicago Magic, and for Providence Catholic High School, where he earned all-state honors as a midfielder.

These examples illustrate why it’s important for young players and their coaches to realize that having the desire and the key attributes to be a goalkeeper does not mean it’s time to specialize. Young players should take every opportunity available to develop their skills in the goal and out on the field.

Field play does more than improve keepers’ foot skills. It also improves their ability to read the game, understand and organize the defense, and anticipate an opponent’s attack. By taking part in an attack, the keeper learns to comprehend how the attack unfolds. This knowledge enables keepers to intercept through balls -- the passes that penetrate the defensive line to give an opponent a clear path to the goal -- and to recognize danger spots when the opponent prepares for a cross.

Keepers must possess game intelligence. Game intelligence allows keepers to anticipate the play so that they can make the proper decisions, and it enables them to communicate to teammates where they need to move and where the keeper needs help. The best place for players to acquire game intelligence is out on the field. The need for goalkeepers to truly understand all aspects of the game is why we say a goalkeeper is just a soccer player who can use hands.

And, as unique as the position is, goalkeepers depend on their teammates just as field players depend on their keepers. Keepers who play other positions get a good appreciation for what a field player has to do. Have you ever heard a goalkeeper screaming at a player to get back and play defense after the player just made an 80-yard run? If you’ve ever made an 80-yard run, you know that it’s not easy to get back right away and that being berated by your keeper does not help.

'FEELING' THE GAME. Making spectacular saves can indeed separate the great keepers from the good ones. But preventing a situation that requires the emergency save is the mark of the very best keepers; therefore, young keepers should constantly strive to improve in this area. There is only so much that a coach can do to help keepers “feel” the game. To a great extent, players must find it for themselves. That’s why keepers should not specialize too early and should continue to get plenty of field time in their youth play.

Being a good field player can also create a more enjoyable soccer experience for young keepers. Beyond the variety and additional challenges, it can lead to more playing time. Each team only needs one goalkeeper at a time.

A good field player can get action when it’s another keeper’s turn between the posts. Keepers who can play well in the field also get the extra respect of teammates.

(Excerpted from “The Complete Soccer Goalkeeper” by Tim Mulqueen with Mike Woitalla courtesy of Human Kinetics.)

Claudio Reyna: 'Coaches should sit down'

By Mike Woitalla

For many reasons, Claudio Reyna was the perfect choice to be named U.S. Soccer’s Youth Technical Director one year ago.

The New Jersey product, who captained the USA at two of his four World Cups, played American youth club, high school and college ball before embarking on a career in Europe that saw him captain teams in Germany, Scotland and the English Premier League. After finishing his playing career with MLS’s New York Red Bulls, which he also captained, Reyna traveled the world to observe the most successful youth programs – including FC Barcelona.

Reyna’s research, and his own experiences, culminated in the Federation’s new curriculum for youth coaches (available for download at USSoccer.com).

Upon the unveiling of "U.S. Soccer Curriculum," Reyna spoke to us about what had impressed him about the youth programs that he found worth emulating.

“The coaches were guiding the training,” he said. “They were not controlling. They weren’t on top of the kids. They were not stopping the play for every mistake.

“None of them yelled. The only time they barked was when kids were screwing around. That’s when they said, ‘Hey, cut it out!’ And boom, the intensity went back up.”

It’s important, Reyna says, to avoid the temptation to focus on mistakes:

“When you first start coaching young players, you see so many things, because, yes, they make mistakes, and if you see a lot of mistakes you want to correct a lot of mistakes. But these coaches were really letting the kids learn the game.”

In the United States, youth soccer struggles to stifle the influence of traditional American sports.

“In our country, we feel we have to do things because of our other sports, which are very much dominated by calling a timeout, writing up a play, 'do this, do that,'” he says. “There is more of an influence from the coach in those sports to solve a situation for the players.”

Another trait of the youth coaches at clubs that succeed at producing top-level players was that they “were very organized, professional, very prepared.

“You could see that they knew what they were doing from one exercise to the next.”

Reyna was struck by the humility of the youth coaches at the pro clubs:

“Very humble. Devoted to their jobs. I got to speak to so many coaches and it was almost when I asked them things they were embarrassed to talk about it. They’d say things like, ‘We’re a part of something else. The kids are students. We’re their teachers. We have to do this job, then we pass them on to the next coach and he does his job, and I get the next group in.’

“And it was very, very powerful to see these guys who were working behind the scenes. They don’t get any credit, no one knows who they are, and for me they were fantastic coaches.”

During games, Reyna observed that “at the best places the youth coaches are sitting down. And if they get up to give instructions, they sit right back down again.

“When the game is going on, all the coaches should just sit down. I think if you ask any player at the youth level, if the coach is on the sidelines standing, it brings tension. You can sense it.”

Coaches at the foreign pro clubs Reyna observed are judged by how many players end up reaching the highest level. And that’s what Reyna says should be the measure for American youth coaches.

“For me, it’s irrelevant if coaches win state cups, regional cups, national cups,” he says. “We get a lot of resumes -- I don’t mean people shouldn’t put that in their resumes – but how many trophies they have in their cabinet isn’t important to me. It’s about the kids, it’s not about you.

“We care about how many players you develop rather than how many trophies you win.

“What is the plan you have? What is your style of play? What’s your philosophy? What do you teach them? What do you do with your staff? If you don’t address that, then what are you doing? Going from week-to-week trying to win games?”

(Mike Woitalla, the executive editor of Soccer America, coaches youth soccer for East Bay United in Oakland, Calif. His youth soccer articles are archived at YouthSoccerFun.com.)