In Sweden there’s been kind of a trend to do a lot of long distance running during the first part of the pre-season, and then as you progress towards the regular season you start to decrease the distance the players are running.
When you first think about it, it looks like a pretty decent idea, right?
Well, it isn’t. I am so tired of hearing coaches talk about “creating a conditioning foundation for the players so they have base to stand on” when the season starts. But here’s where it gets weird in my opinion.
I’ve always had a relatively high success rate against penalties, certainly managing to predict the right way even if the pace beat me, and again I fancied my chances. As a goalkeeper I was a natural loner and this situation always suited me to a tee…….me against them. I eyeballed the striker and watched his body language; I was diving to my right. At what height he hit the ball was then down to pure chance but I knew that I was playing the percentages in my favour and all I had to do was get in the way. With the eyes of my new teammates piercing the tension, not to mention the sub keeper in the dugout who’s place I’d pinched upon my arrival at the club; I knew I was under pressure. The striker placed the ball after I’d eventually given it back to him and started to pace out his run up. I was in no doubt which side he was shooting and as he struck the ball I took my initial step into the dive. BOOM! The ball cannoned off my knee, in fact the same knee as earlier, and rebounded to the relative safety of their full back on the touchline where he was dispossessed by our striker with a well timed sliding tackle. It is always a buzz when your team mates crowd round for the obligatory high fives and pats on the back, but even more so when you’ve just clawed yourself out the hole in which you dropped yourself in the first place. We subsequently went on to win the game 2-0 and as a direct result topped the table of which we would eventually finish second after a long arduous season.
This incident was what sparked my interest in coaching; what if I hadn’t made that save and went on to have an absolute ‘mare? Who would support me at my new club? We didn’t have a goalkeeper coach as they were a rarity at professional level let alone at our stage of the pyramid. It would’ve been pretty certain that the gaffer wouldn’t have helped as his priority is to win games and not friends; even though he was the reason for me signing on I’m not naïve enough to know that football is solely a results business and the gaffer was certainly a big enough character to make the big decisions when necessary. My only route of support would have been the sub keeper, and that would have been limited as I’d stolen his thunder by signing on, but we are all aware that the keepers union does indeed exist and we eventually went on to create a good working relationship between ourselves. He was the first goalkeeper that I ever coached as I became increasingly frustrated later on in my career at the lack of options for the keeper that I made the decision of, rather than complain, do it myself. That has always been my way in life and, like everyone, I naturally moan and whinge in the vain hope that someone will listen but eventually I will have a go to rectify it myself. The gaffer was a top man and had no qualms in allowing us to train separately from the lads, although there was the inevitable banter when they were doing their circuits and fitness work and we were still working with a football. Looking back on it now, those early sessions were formative of my coaching ethos I’ve adopted now – every session shall include a football from start to finish.
I was simply a trainer back then as I had little knowledge of either how to coach or indeed what to coach so we simply did drills that I had seen in books or on the television. It was all ‘old skool’ stuff but very effective for the level we were performing at, and it served me well for my future career. I was fastidious about being able to catch the ball and this was possibly the strongest forte of my game. I attempted to catch absolutely everything possible in training, there are always the inevitable shots that require a palm or a tip away but anything in my proximity I would strive to get hold of, again this is something that I have taken into my coaching – I want to see an attempt to catch the ball in the first instance. It doesn’t overly worry me if you drop it in training as long as you react to the fumble, but if you didn’t try to catch then how would you know what was possible in a game? There are many mantras that I adopt for each and every session and the goalkeepers that I work with quickly become aware of the levels expected of them, I find that by setting not just targets but achievable targets, motivates the goalkeeper into upping their performance and development quicker than a simple pat on the back and a “well done”.
You need to be able to perform a lot of high intensity runs and recover quickly, and maintain you mental state and make good decisions when you are tired!
So by doing a lot of small-sided games where you play for instance 4 vs 4, you can make the drill more intense and demanding by having the players play man-to-man defense, meaning when they lose the ball, they have one player they should mark and follow all over the field, no matter what!
That’s a great conditioning drill, and best of all – it’s fun!
To sum it up – conditioning should be done on the soccer field (at the end of the practice) and it should be maintained all year round, even during in-season
Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez H.
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Tags: soccer