Most often what people remember of goalkeepers is their mistakes. Of all the positions in the game of football it is undeniably the harshest because one error can overshadow all the good work that one might do through the rest of the ninety minutes. And yet, for those called to the role, there is nothing better. “I wanted a better chance to influence whether my team won or lost,” says Justin Bryant a former professional goalkeeper, current goalkeeper coach and author of the book 'Small Time: A Life in the Football Wilderness.' ”When I was a young player, I got tired of losing games because whoever had reluctantly gone in goal kept letting the ball dribble through his hands. After that happened two or three times, I volunteered, and never looked back.” This interview talks about why he kept on going in goal, what he learned and his ideas on coaching for the role. Blueprint for Football: When did you decide that this was something that you wanted to do for the rest of your career? Justin Bryant: It didn’t take long. I immersed myself in goalkeeping almost immediately. I would say that by the time I was fourteen, it was my identity. I never considered anything else. BfF: What level of coaching did you receive? JB: None, at first. I grew up on an island on the east coast of Florida in the 1970s. Nobody in that area had any appreciable background in the game. When I got to the high school level, I was lucky enough to have an expat Englishman, John McGeough, as a coach. His goalkeeping background was limited, but he knew enough about the position to help me understand the basics. I got a lot from reading interviews with Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton in old ‘Shoot’ magazines, and from watching professional goalkeepers in the league we had in the States at that time, the NASL. BfF: You've written a book about your experiences playing in a number of leagues. What brought that about? JB: I’m not really an ex-player who wrote a book; I’m more a writer who just so happened to have been a goalkeeper when he was young. By the time I wrote ‘Small Time,’ I’d already published a novel, had a dozen short stories and essays in journals, and earned a Masters in Creative Writing from New York University. So, as a writer with a footballing past, it only made sense to write about my experiences as a player.
BfF: In the book you write in detail about the stress and anxiety. Is that part and parcel of a goalkeeper's role more than other players? JB: I think some element of stress and anxiety is unavoidable. The potential for catastrophic, humiliating mistakes is there. Just look at YouTube. I skewed to the more extreme end of the anxiety spectrum, although my problem wasn’t simply pre-match nerves. I had them, but so does everyone else. My problem was much bigger and more overriding. I put huge pressure on myself to succeed, because the only identity I could imagine for myself was professional goalkeeper, and anything short of that would be not just professional but also personal failure. That was a pretty heavy burden to live with every day, and long term, it took a toll. Outfield players have to deal with pressure too, but they have more opportunities to make up for mistakes, as they’re generally more involved in the flow of the game. My anxiety is not gone. It’s much less severe now, and I know how to manage it far better, but it’s still there, even at age 50 and with the pressure of chasing a career in professional football decades in my past. So it’s not something I can blame on goalkeeping. Indeed, going in goal these days is an absolute joy. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it, so I treasure it now. BfF: Going by your own experiences, what do you tell other goalkeepers today who struggle with anxiety? How important is getting the mentality right and do you think you developed that aspect of the game? JB: If someone gets to the level of anxiety I had, they really need the professional help that I didn’t get at the time. If it’s the more standard pre-match nerves, or fear of mistakes, my preference is to focus on the positives of nerves. That adrenalin coursing through your body can help you make saves you simply can’t make in training. Pressure also helps you narrow your focus. So I try to help them accept the nerves, and make them work for you, rather than against you. Getting the mentality right is at least half the battle. If a goalkeeper has the ability but not the mentality, you are not going to see consistently good performances. More and more, I think of these things in a holistic way. If a goalkeeper is struggling mentally, I ask them what it is they want from the game, what they hope to achieve, why they play. Is it fun? Okay, then have fun. Is it an identity, a calling, like it was for me? That can drive you to higher levels, but almost inevitably comes at the price of peace of mind. I think I did develop the proper mental approach to goalkeeping, but it took time. I didn’t have the right balance until the last year or two of my playing days. BfF: How does a goalkeeper deal with letting in a goal largely because of a mistake he made? How do you recover? JB: Well, there’s how a goalkeeper recovers, and how a goalkeeper should recover. Many goalkeepers - young ones, especially - will dwell on the mistake. This will either negatively affect their confidence, or force them into acts of crazed bravado, in an attempt to ‘make up for it.’ A far better reaction is to allow yourself a natural moment of disbelief, anguish, and regret, and then file it away to be dealt with later, getting on with the game in the meantime. It’s not easy. You might, after all, have ten or twenty minutes with little else to do following a mistake, so it’s natural to dwell. It’s not a bad idea to have some sort of ‘move on’ trigger, like saying “That’s it” aloud to yourself, to refocus.
BfF: What is harder a match where you are constantly in action against a superior team or a game where he rarely touches a ball but is then called into action? And how does one prepare for both? JB: For me, the latter was always much more difficult. The longer you go with nothing to do in a game, the further you get from the time when you were handling shots and making saves in the warm-up. That’s one reason I admired Ray Clemence. In his and Liverpool’s prime, he often had just one save to make in games, and he would usually make it. BfF: What are the biggest misconceptions that pundits say or fans think about goalkeepers? JB: For a start, there’s the myth that getting beat at the near post is somehow worse than getting beat anywhere else. In some cases, such as from very tight angles, it is, but commentators and pundits use this as a catch-all critique, and it is generally nonsense. Put it this way: if a keeper gets beat at his near post, by a shot just two steps to one side, it would be just as bad if he got beat to the far post by a shot just two steps to his side. The mistake isn’t that it was at the near post, but that it was a shot well within reach. ‘Goalkeepers are crazy’ is also largely a myth. I have personally known hundreds, perhaps close to a thousand, goalkeepers in my life. The overwhelming majority are perfectly normal men and women who just so happen to enjoy diving around trying to catch a ball. A surprising number of pundits and commentators don’t seem to understand direct free kicks. If a goal is scored, they will question the goalkeeper’s positioning, even when it is perfectly orthodox. I also cringe when I hear a pundit say that every ball inside the six-yard-box should be the keeper’s, taking no account of how many players may be obstructing or challenging the keeper, the pace and trajectory of the ball, etc. Along these same lines is ‘dominate the box.’ Who dominates the box these days? The game has changed. Some people use the phrase ‘good shot stopper’ in a pejorative way, with the implication being that shot stopping is not what really matters. This is ridiculous. Goalkeeping will always primarily be about making saves. I could probably give you a very long list of answers to this question!
BfF: You're now a goalkeepers' coach. First off, what does your day to day job entail? JB: There is no typical day, really. Often, at UNC Wilmington, we have a morning team training session, followed by some time in the office with the rest of the coaching staff, sorting out administrative tasks. I get into the gym most days, and do session planning and coaching education stuff in the afternoons. While you can watch goalkeeper training sessions from all over the world on YouTube, I firmly believe a goalkeeper coach should come up with at least some of their own drills and activities. Otherwise, you’re using someone else’s drill without really knowing what the coaching moments are. So I spend some time every day on the white board, experimenting with new ideas. Two evenings a week, I train youth goalkeepers for a local club, Wilmington Hammerheads. The schedule is different on match days and the off season. BfF: Why do goalkeepers need their own coaches? JB: Goalkeepers need to be trained to perform specific tasks in a consistently repeatable way under match pressure, with almost no margin for error. This needs to be done by someone who understands the technique needed for these specialist tasks, and can train, coach, and correct as needed. That’s the dry, factual answer. But beyond that, most goalkeepers benefit from spending time with a coach who understands and can relate to the unique physical and psychological demands of goalkeeping. Put simply, goalkeeping can be a lonely pursuit. Most of us can use an ally. BfF: Do the coaching needs of someone who is largely a reserve goalkeeper and the regular keeper change? JB: I think so, yes. I think you prepare a reserve keeper to be able to represent their best form when needed, but you’re flying blind, to a degree, since, without games, you don’t really know what their current form actually is. You also often have to be a little more encouraging, since they aren’t getting the games most players thrive on. You have to guard against them feeling unloved or sorry for themselves, and thinking that putting in hard work isn’t worth it. With the first-team goalkeeper, you can tailor training to what you’re seeing from them in games. I like to find ways for them to have success with aspects they may be struggling with, while reinforcing what they’re already doing well, to keep their confidence high. It should go without saying, though, that every goalkeeper is different, and you have to train the individual in the manner that is most effective for them. I can put a goalkeeper I don’t know through a decent training session, but once I get to know them, their personality, and what motivates them, I can put them through a much better session. BfF: How does one go about ensuring that there is a good understanding between the goalkeeper and his defenders? JB: They have to train together as a unit, under match-realistic pressure from attackers. Nothing else can replicate that. Ideally, you overload them a little - give the attackers a numerical advantage, award them free kicks in dangerous areas, etc - but not so much that the defensive unit has no chance of success in training. I know most people think defensive football is boring, but I love the sight of a goalkeeper and back four coordinated in their thinking and actions.
BfF: What skills are essential for a modern goalkeepers? And how have things changed from the past? JB: It’s mostly the same skill set as always: good handling, reflexes, agility, power, and explosiveness, along with the mental skills of judgment, decision making, and emotional control. The biggest change from the past is being comfortable receiving and passing the ball under pressure, and of course, dealing with back passes, which a goalkeeper could pick up when I started playing. There are some more subtle differences, too, borne from changes in the game as a whole. Compared to decades past, the ball is lighter and moves more unpredictably in the air, the pitches are better (at least at the professional level), leading to less direct, more possession-oriented attacking play, and referees are inclined to protect goalkeepers a little bit more. All this has combined to see a gradual shift away from big, bulky goalkeepers who were relied upon to deal with aerial bombardment, to leaner, more athletic goalkeepers valued for shot-stopping ability. BfF: Do you see any changes or evolution to the role in the coming years? JB: A lot of people seem to think Manuel Neuer is revolutionizing goalkeeping, and that his ‘sweeper-keeper’ style, by virtue of being modern and different, is inherently the best way to keep goal. I don’t. This is nothing against Neuer, who is a fantastic goalkeeper. He plays in a way that suits his skills and his team’s needs, but it’s not for everyone. Thibault Courtois and David De Gea don’t spend much time playing passes outside their box, and they’re both quite a few years younger than Neuer. So I haven’t seen a trend towards it, at least from top pros. Perhaps the next generation will take it to a new level, but I think we are close to being at a point of diminished returns regarding the sweeper-keeper. The value a team gets from the goalkeeper making successful interventions outside the box is balanced by the risk of those interventions. It only gets riskier the further from goal the goalkeeper takes touches, and most managers are risk-averse to begin with. So I don’t think we’re going to see the sweeper-keeper role evolve much more than it already has. If there’s further evolution coming, it may be in response to another big change in the laws of the game, like we saw with the back pass law in the early 90s. Whatever it is, it will be designed to increase scoring, so goalkeepers will need to change and adapt along with the game itself.
Special thanks to Justin Bryant for taking the time to answer Blueprint for Football's questions. Enjoyed this? Want more? Sign up to Blueprint for Football Extra and as a free bonus you'll get a copy of our exclusive e-book Blueprint According To...Volume 3 that features interviews with six football coaches on how they go about their building their knowledge.
Join Blueprint for Football Extra to ensure that you don't miss future articles and get the full transcript of the interview plus a free e-book in the process. Other Blueprint for Football e-books available here (international version here). What do you need to be a top goalkeeper? Obviously talent is a necessity as is physical presence but what else? We spoke to Ruud Hesp, formerly a goalkeeper with Barcelona and currently the goalkeeper’s coach at PSV Eindhoven, about the various facets of the art of goalkeeping. The Most Important Ability A Goalkeeper Needs The thing that you need to have is to be stable in your head; to be able to get along with pressure. For me, for example, when I played for Barcelona I didn’t feel the pressure from the public and the press because I didn’t read the papers, I didn’t see the television and I was only thinking about my own pressure. I was only thinking about playing well and if I didn’t do that then people could only be disappointed but not angry because I knew that I was doing everything to perform well.
I trained well during the whole week. For me every training (session) was an opportunity to improve. So when I started the game I had the confidence of being prepared for the game. And then you need some luck also apart from the qualities you have. You have to be free in your head. Reaction After A Mistake What I try to give our goalkeepers at PSV is that you have to think about what happens. Briefly, but you have to think about it. What kind of mistake did I make? And it sounds very stupid but ask yourself: did I do it on purpose? No, I didn’t do it on purpose. So, people cannot be angry at me, they can only be disappointed. Then what you have to do is to analyse your mistake. Is it a goalkeeping mistake? Is it a positioning mistake, did you place yourself in the wrong spot? Did you come out when you shouldn’t have? Is it something with your feet that you did wrong? I can give you an example. When I played for Barcelona against Chelsea in 1998, we lost at Chelsea 3-1 so needed to win 2-0. We were leading 2-0 and I received a ball that I played badly. I wanted to kick it long but instead gave to the Chelsea striker Tore Andre Flo and he scored; 2-1. In the end we won and went through but at that moment we still had to play 15 minutes to score another goal. After that mistake, in the next minute Frank Lampard shot on goal because maybe he thought that I was insecure or my confidence had gone. And it was a ball that was swerving in the air. The ball came just to the right side of me, I got it and I held it. That was the first moment after the mistake.
Afterwards I was trying to analyse what happened and I realised that I had been able to analyse the mistake as one with my kicking, not a mistake of catching the ball. So I instinctively realised that a mistake of my passing should not influence my goalkeeping (shot stopping). And that is what I try to explain to our goalkeepers, even our youth goalkeepers. One mistake does not have to influence other parts of your goalkeeping. But that comes with experience. That’s difficult in the beginning. Training For Handling Mistakes You don’t know in advance but you can train. You can train it by putting the goalkeeper in those situations. In training you can play bad balls and if he makes a mistake then the next ball has to be good. And if you try to get the goalkeeper in a lot of bad situations then he has to react to that and do the good thing. So you have to bring him in bad situations to get him in a positive situation. In the beginning that is very difficult because they get frustrated but if that happens a lot of time then it gets natural and automatic reaction after they do a mistake. But that also needs a lot of experience. That is also why they say that a goalkeeper is at his peak after twenty seven years because by then he has played a lot of games, he’s had a lot of situations, so he knows what to do.
Ability With Feet And Hands Goalkeeping has changed and playing with your feet is important. But still what is most important is the goalkeeping with your hands, choosing position and things like that. So, what we try to do is to train the goalkeepers in playing with ball – passing and kicking – in exercises that involve goalkeeping. That means they have to shoot a lot, they have to play in position games and when the outfield players do passing exercises goalkeepers join them. It is also important for the players to know the capabilities of the goalkeeper in playing with his feet. So many times our warming ups include a lot of football actions because about ten years ago when it all changed everybody began to train the football things and not as much the goalkeeping things. And, in my opinion, that went too far. The most important is the goal. The goalkeeper is the only one who can use his hands so that has to be a hundred percent. He is also allowed to use his feet but that is secondary. So most important is training the hands and then the feet.
On Commanding The Penalty Area It is difficult and that also needs experience. But if you start training that aspect from a young age then you can develop it. Also, it depends on character. If you’re a quite person it is difficult for you to be dominant during the game. But if you want to succeed you have to. So it is important that they start getting that feeling from a young age. What we try to do at PSV is to give them some words that they have to use according to the situation. That way if they grow up or get to another team then they know what to do. At the same time the players know that they mean when they state those words. If you train that from a young age they get used to it. It becomes a habit.
When I started out as a goalkeeper professionally I was a quite boy but then I came into a team that was made up of very opinionated men so if I wanted to survive I had to do the same. So in order to integrate I had to do the same. I had to train myself because in those days, whilst there was a goalkeeping coach, he was only shooting balls to the goal. They were not working with a philosophy about how to improve the goalkeepers. Nowadays we have a lot of plans and we do a lot of logical things. In the old days we used to shoot balls. It was nice but now we try to be a bit more specific. What does a goalkeeper need to play well? We constantly ask ourselves that. Preparing For Big Games For me, if we show them pictures of opponents then we are not doing so to worry them but to remind them of the opportunity that they have. Wow, you’re going to face Messi! We show them their qualities and they have to be prepared for that. But we present it to them as a chance to do well, not a reason to worry. They get videos sent home so that they can be prepared but again it is for the opportunity to stop people from scoring. If you present it like that then the goalkeepers gets into the game with another feeling. You should never give the impression that the opponent is too good for you.
Special thanks to Thijs Slegers, the press officer at PSV Eindhoven, for his assistance in the setting up of this interview. Other snippets from the interview with Ruud Hesp are available here.
Goalkeepers, it is often said, are different. You have to be when in a game where the ultimate aim is to put the ball between the goalposts you dedicate yourself to stop it from doing so. There is often little glory to be had and the expectation that you are willing to do anything – including throwing yourself into trashing boots – to get hold of the ball. It is a tough, unglamorous and thanklessness job. So why would anyone decide to become a goalkeeper? “I wasn’t good enough to play outfield!” Ruud Hesp laughs as he recalls how it was that he picked up goalkeepers’ gloves for the first time. “I was always big. I started as a striker, moved to midfield and in the end I was a central defender because I was the biggest player and I could head the ball well so they moved me over there.” It is there that he would have stayed if fate hadn’t intervened. “When I was twelve years old I played at an amateur club and the goalkeeper was sick, the second goalkeeper had to play a table tennis game so they said ‘Ruud will you go in goal?’ because I was playing goalkeeper at my school. I played very well in that first game and they said ‘you stay in goal’. And I liked it. So it was a coincidence that I became a goalkeeper.” This seems to be the conventional path for most goalkeepers. The main difference for Hesp was that he was good enough at it to make a career out of goalkeeping. Most of this career was spent playing for mid-size clubs who often lagged behind the three giants of Dutch football. He was good enough to catch the attention of Dutch national coaches but call-ups never turned into appearances. Then, at the age of thirty two, he received a surprise call: Barcelona wanted to sign him.
Louis Van Gaal had just been re-appointed manager and it was on his recommendation that Hesp was approached. Barcelona had signed Vitor Baia the previous summer but whilst the Portuguese was at the time considered among the world’s finest goalkeepers not everyone was convinced. “Van Gaal had already tried to sign me for Ajax but there was Edwin Van Der Saar there and I knew that he was better than me. I didn’t fancy going to Ajax to be a reserve so I turned him down. Clearly, he must have thought highly enough of me that he mentioned me when he moved to Spain.” “After a couple of weeks, Baia got injured and I stepped into his place.” Hesp retained his place even when the Portuguese goalkeeper recovered – indeed, Baia was loaned back to Porto midway through the season - and he eventually went on to win two league titles, a European Super Cup and a Copa Del Rey in his three years with the Catalan giants. “Barcelona are the biggest club in the world and playing for them was amazing,” he says. After Barcelona he went into coaching and was the goalkeepers’ coach of the Dutch national side that reached the World Cup final in 2010. “When Edwin Van der Saar played his first national game I was the second goalkeeper,” he recalls. “When he played his last national game I was there as the national team’s goalkeeping coach.” By that stage, Hesp had started to put the experience that he had garnered to the benefit of others as a goalkeeper’s coach and the main current beneficiaries are the PSV goalkeepers, where Hesp works.
There is a particular moment where the benefit of this experience stuck out. “I can give you an example. When I played for Barcelona against Chelsea in 1998, we lost at Chelsea 3-1 so needed to win 2-0. We were leading 2-0 and I received a ball that I played badly. I wanted to kick it long but instead gave to the Chelsea striker Tore Andre Flo and he scored; 2-1.” “In the end we won and went through but at that moment we still had to play 15 minutes to score another goal. After that mistake, in the next minute, Frank Lampard shot at goal because maybe he thought that I was insecure or my confidence had gone. And it was a ball that was swerving in the air. The ball came just to the right side of me, I got it and I held it. That was the first moment after the mistake.” “Afterwards I was trying to analyse what happened and I realised that I had been able to analyse the mistake as one with my kicking, not a mistake of catching the ball.” “So I instinctively realised that a mistake of my passing should not influence my goalkeeping (shot stopping). And that is what I try to explain to our goalkeepers, even our youth goalkeepers. One mistake does not have to influence other parts of your goalkeeping. But that comes with experience. That’s difficult in the beginning.” The benefit of his experience played out even off the pitch. “Before Barcelona I played in Roda and we had a lot of foreign guys who couldn’t speak the language.” “They walked past supporters who wanted to speak to them but they couldn’t talk back. I always thought to myself that if I ever moved to another country I wanted to know the language because I wanted to speak to the people. And it is easier on the pitch.”
“So there was a translator who was always helping the new foreign players with the press conferences. He started doing the same with me for one month but afterwards I started doing them in Spanish.” “I made a lot of mistakes but afterwards the journalists came to me to tell me that it was great that I was doing so after one month. They appreciated it and they gave me tips of what to say in certain situations. So I started talking Spanish really quickly. And I also asked people. Speaking the language is very important.” Hesp is clearly passionate about his job and loves what he does but there he admits that being a coach is second best to actually playing. “As a goalkeeper you think you have control of the situation and you can influence the situation. As a goalkeeper trainer your influence lasts until the players get on to the pitch. Then it stops. That is the big difference.” “As a goalkeeper coach you cannot make corrections on the pitch. Then it stops. That is the big difference.” “When I started as a goalkeeper coach I was more nervous than when I was a player.”
“Being a goalkeeper is the most beautiful thing to do and being a goalkeeper’s coach is the second most beautiful thing to do. I enjoy coaching young players because they’re hungry to learn about the game and eager to hear what you have to say. I really enjoy what I’m doing at a very beautiful club.” At PSV he is tasked with coaching not only the first team players but also those players coming through the ranks meaning that he is tasked with continuing the rich Dutch tradition for great goalkeepers. “I think that it is because in Holland we spend a lot of time training goalkeepers. Even in the old days. In Holland everyone had his goalkeeper’s coach and that has been the case for a lot of years. Before other countries started having a goalkeeper trainer in Holland we already had that,” he says of this tradition. “We always thought in Holland that goalkeepers were very important and that they are the foundation of the team. You can have good players but if the goalkeeper isn’t good enough then you have a problem. A house is built on a good foundation. It is the same with goalkeepers.” “That is why in Holland we spend a lot of time on goalkeeper training. When I started my career in professional football it was only shooting at the goal but I got the attention.” “I’ve had a lot of goalkeeper trainers myself and now I’m doing it. It is good to have a goalkeeper coach because he sees and feels the thing you feel. For me (as a coach) it is much easier to see into the head of a goalie. A goalie can come to me and ask me things on why it happened and I can talk to him about it.”
“These days games are decided by details and having a good goalkeeping coach can be a very important detail.” “Today all players are very fit, they have power, and they are well conditioned. So in those cases you look for the details and it can help make you champions.” Special thanks to Thijs Slegers, the press officer at PSV Eindhoven, for his assistance in the setting up of this interview. Enjoyed this article? Join Blueprint for Football Extra to ensure that you don't miss future articles and get the full transcript of the interview plus a free e-book in the process. Other Blueprint for Football e-books available here (international version here).
