Wear Green and Don't Be Seen!

Ignore the blatant plugging for Nike (and Manchester United!) in this video and what they say makes sense for all goalkeepers.

Whilst wearing red is proven to boost your confidence, goalkeepers should wear green....and it is a bit old skool!!! Am I showing my age, or what?

Gavin Wilson
Senior Sports Performance Coach
MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www.MindsiOnline.com

Vialii at Villa

This week I had the pleasure of visiting Aston Villa's state of the art training facility at Bodymoor Heath. Italian legend Gianluca Vialla was there too and was speaking to the Academy players. This was what he wrote on the whiteboard for them. Wise words indeed. Take heed.

Gavin Wilson

Senior Sports Performance Coach

MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE

www.MindsiOnline.com

Want Some Motivation? Then Watch This!

MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
http://www.mindsionline.com/

Awesome Tekkers? Not For English Keepers!

Starter for ten: Which Premier League player has made the fewest appearances over the longest period of time? Give up? The answer is Stuart Taylor, the goalkeeper once of Arsenal and now of Manchester City. Over a 14-year period Taylor has played 86 games (just 30 in the Premier League) for a host of clubs.
It isn't that Stuart Taylor is a poor goalkeeper; he wouldn't have been contracted to three Premier League clubs since 1997 if he wasn't rated. His opportunities, though, have been restricted courtesy of, among others, David Seaman, Brad Friedel and the current England No1, Joe Hart. Naturally there will be some that question a perennial No2's desire to play, but the fact is that the role remains a necessary requirement of any squad.

The reason I mention Taylor is that in many ways his career is a microcosm for the problem English goalkeeping has faced over the last 10 years, whereby opportunities to break through have become fewer and the talent pool has dried up. The end result could be seen in Bulgaria at a recent England international, where Frank Fielding and David Stockdale, who are both playing in the Championship, were the back-up options for Hart.
I sincerely hope the experience gained by Fielding and Stockdale benefits them enormously because there is precious little chance of them getting any in the Premier League. Look at last weekend, when 20 Premier League clubs fielded just four English goalkeepers between them. One was England's No1, two have retired from the international scene and the other, John Ruddy, has just been promoted to the top flight with Norwich.

What a difference in Spain. The national team currently have a choice of Víctor Valdés, Iker Casillas and Pepe Reina, and out of the 20 teams that kicked off La Liga last weekend, 15 had Spanish goalkeepers. It would have been 16 but Manchester United took David de Gea from Atlético Madrid in the summer and the Spanish club replaced him with a young goalkeeper on loan from Chelsea, who happens to be Belgian rather than English.
Peter Shilton, England's most capped player, suggested last year that English goalkeepers are not coached on the technical aspects of their profession as well as their foreign counterparts.

One foreign Premier League goalkeeper disputed that was the case when I spoke to him this week, and told me that the young English keepers were as good if not better technically, saying their handling skills are often superior because they are more comfortable catching balls that others would punch.

Yet if you look back through the Premier League years, the top English clubs of their time have barely produced a goalkeeper of note between them, with Ian Walker at Tottenham Hotspur, and Paul Robinson and Scott Carson at Leeds United the only real success stories.

When you then consider that Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Liverpool all currently have first-choice goalkeepers in their 20s who could, quite feasibly play for another decade, and look at how tough it is to bring someone through who can only fill one position on the pitch, you could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that it is simply not in the interests of top Premier League clubs to invest time into trying to identify and develop one of their own.

Yet when I put that to a coach at one of those five clubs this week, he insisted that was not the case. "We are constantly looking but our remit has changed in recent years," he said. "We aren't looking for something near to the finished article any more. Initially, we are looking for somebody that has the physical attributes to be a top keeper rather than the technical ones, which you hope can be developed over time. Height has become more and more important. The first question anyone asks about a goalkeeper is 'How tall is he?' Six foot is no longer tall enough."
I'm no expert in genetics, but I do know that the landscape for outfield players is very different. Despite the class of Cesc Fábregas and Samir Nasri, Arsenal were able to find a position for Jack Wilshere while Tom Cleverley and Danny Welbeck have forced their way through at Manchester United. All three players were aided by loan spells at other Premier League sides that accelerated their development and proved they could handle the top flight coupled with players around them that were able to sweep away any little mistakes. But what would happen if any of the elite clubs produced a top-class English keeper? Would another Premier League manager give them a chance without knowing they could play at that level?
Hart appears to have got it right by learning the ropes at Shrewsbury Town, where he got the experience at a young age that is so critical to any player's development, before joining City. He was brought through under Sven-Goran Eriksson and had a taste of the Premier League before the successful loan spell at Birmingham that convinced Roberto Mancini to pick him ahead of Shay Given.

For the record, I've never regarded English goalkeepers as a soft touch on the pitch, I've also found them to be calmer off the field than their foreign counterparts, who in some cases (and I've room-shared with a few) are the sort that you half expect to see on the six o'clock news for non-football-related reasons. English keepers of the last 20 years have tended to be very capable, without winning too many plaudits en masse, but at least the future looks a little more promising.

Hopefully Fielding and Stockdale will go on to prove that they belong in the same company as Hart. Behind them, I'm reliably told there are some exciting youngsters to watch out for, including Bryan Gunn's son, Angus, who has recently joined Manchester City from Norwich, and Sam Johnstone, a fellow England youth international who is learning the ropes at Manchester United. We can only hope that if they do become the answer to a quiz question 14 years from now, it is because they were used for more than a cheap start to a blog article.

Gavin Wilson

MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www.MindsiOnline.com

Basketball and Goalkeeping - A Common Connection

As an avid follower of both basketball and football, I have for some time believed their to be a close links to the skills and demands of basketballer to those of a goalkeeper. My theory has been further enhanced by watching my 11 year old son develop so promisingly at both basketball and goalkeeping. Then I found this fascinating article courtesy of American basketball coach Brian McCormick:


"I jumped into a twitter discussion this week between soccer coaches because I felt that the coaches were settling for obvious explanations that ultimately affect our understanding of sports and talent development. The coaches were discussing goalkeepers, and the ability of the United States to develop several world-class goalkeepers while not developing any true world-class field players.

The soccer coaches latched onto the familiar answer: children in the U.S. grow up playing hand-eye sports like basketball, baseball, football and more, so they naturally gravitate to the goalkeeper position and excel with their hand-eye coordination.

I suggested that the explanation ran deeper into the development of the players. Because of European transfer rules (work visas), U.S. players have to prove themselves with the U.S. Men’s National Team or major League Soccer before transferring to a prominent European league, like the English Premiere League. Therefore, players are essentially near their professional peaks when they finally transfer, somewhere around 26 years old.

For a goalkeeper, this is no problem, as goalkeepers mature later and maintain their peak performance for longer because it is a position that relies heavily on perceptual-cognitive skills like reading angles, anticipating movements, and choice reaction time developed through experience, while field players rely heavily on physical qualities like quickness. A goalkeeper that transfers to an English club at 26-years-old has time to learn the league, fail, rebound and perform at the highest level for a dozen years. USMNT goalkeeper Tim Howard transferred to Manchester United, played well, played poorly, lost his job and transferred to Everton where he was given a second chance and has established himself as one of the best goalkeepers in England. Would a field player be given that second opportunity by another club at that age?

Field players develop through the U.S. system and have an adjustment period when moving to a better league. Basketball players have an adjustment when moving from college to the NBA. However, most basketball players are 19-23 when they make the move to the NBA. They have room to develop and have yet to hit their physical peak. They can learn for a year or two and have time to play into and out of their physical peak.

A soccer player undergoes the same transition, yet he is at his physical peak. If he cannot contribute immediately upon arrival with his European club, does he have time to learn the league, develop and get a second chance? Unlikely, especially with the stigma that U.S. players lack the skills to compete at the highest levels. The stigma becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, while the perception of the U.S. producing great goalkeepers improves a U.S. goalkeeper’s chances to get a second look.

The U.S. is transitioning from the players who played in the 2006 and 2010 World Cups to those who will play in the 2014 World Cup (hopefully). However, few of the new players have established themselves, and they are not playing in Europe (unless they have access to European passports, like Stuart Holden or Timothy Chandler, are older, like Clint Dempsey, or are playing in a smaller league like Alejandro Bedoya).

Players who are imagined to be the future of the team, like Tim Ream and Omar Gonzales, are not that young (25 and 24) anymore. At that age, they are nearing their physical peaks and should be playing at the highest levels already to prepare for the World Cup and to challenge themselves professionally. If they are unready for the best leagues at 24 years old, the question must be asked if they will ever be ready? If they transfer at 27 or 28, they may play well for a year or two, and may hold on for a while in near-top leagues like Carlos Bocanegra in France because of their understanding and intelligence which compensates for their lessening speed, but they probably missed their window to accelerate their development by playing with and against the best at a more developmental age.

However, it is much easier to attribute goalkeeper’s success to a basketball up-bringing than to examine the entire developmental system. We are similarly short-sighted in basketball development and training, as we attribute success to a simple explanation while there are many. Parents tell me that their son needs to play year-round AAU basketball at 8-years-old because that’s how LeBron James developed, ignoring the fact that he also played football in high school.

When the facts do not support their argument, however, they are irrelevant. It is much easier to attribute James’ success to his play in AAU than to imagine that football had an effect on his development or that there were other things in play.

Great players often make poor trainers or coaches because they attribute their success to their training programs, even though their success likely had more to do with their work ethic than their training. Many perpetuate poorly planned training because of their attribution of their success. If they ran five miles a day in the summer and were good at basketball, they attribute their success to the five miles per day, not the random pick up games or their effort on the court.

Talent development is never a simple answer. There are many factors involved in an athlete’s development and settling on the easy or obvious explanation often short-changes the athlete and misappropriates his or her success, oftentimes leading to the continuation of biases or poor training."

Gavin Wilson
MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www.MindsiOnline.com

What Can Goalkeepers Learn From Ronaldo?

Well, watch this:

So, what can goalkeepers learn from this? Well, Ronaldo has honed his skills through hours and hours of practice. He has practiced so much that he now intuitively knows where the ball is going to go by sub-consciously observing the clues he is receiveing from the player's body shape, the flight of the ball, the trajectory, the space around him and so on and so on.

Ronaldo didn't put the ball in the net, in darkness, by magic and it was not through natural skill. It was simply down to the hours and hours of practice that he has done over many, many years giving him the awareness and experience to know what to do, instinctively, at the right time- regardless of the conditions.

So what can goalkeepers learn from Ronaldo? To get excellent you have to practice; the more training you do, the more shots that you save, the more intuitive you will be in match situations. Simple!

Gavin Wilson
Senior Sports Performance Coach
MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www. MINDSiOnline.com

Get Your ARSE In Gear!

A common occurrence that all athletes encounter is performance errors. All athletes make mistakes; it is a natural part of learning to be competent at any activity. Since mistakes are normal, it is beneficial to help athletes accept that errors will occur in sport. A unique approach to dealing with performance errors is presented by Halden-Brown (2003). In her book, she addresses the normalcy of making mistakes in sport and how coaches can use these errors to train athletes both physically and mentally. I propose that teaching athletes about resilience will facilitate their ability to accept mistakes and use these errors as a catalyst for optimizing performance.

In a book on mental training in softball, the authors delineate five principles of performance excellence. While set in the context of fastpitch softball, these principles can easily be applied to any competitive setting. The fifth principle, Resilience, is the key to overcoming performance errors. Simply stated, resilience is the ability to remain composed, confident, and consistent in the face of errors. A resilient athlete is one who can let go of errors and return to the present; s/he uses the error as an opportunity to learn and improve. The athlete who is not resilient will dwell on the mistake, be unable to stay in the present, and his/her performance will be inconsistent.

Solomon and Becker (2004) created a four-step process which athletes can use to deal with performance errors. The sequence is as follows.

A = Acknowledge the error and the frustration it has caused
R = Review the play and determine how and why the error occurred
S = Strategize a plan to make the necessary corrections for the future
E = Execute and prepare for the next play

The ability to overcome performance errors is a skill that any athlete can learn.
Teaching athletes this sequence will give them a tool for managing the emotional response which comes with making mistakes and help them to get their ARSE in gear!

Jessica De La Souza
MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www.MindsiOnline.com

Funky Goalkeeper Gloves!