Soccer coaching tips to keep your goalie active
Playing in goal can be a tough experience for young football players because they sometimes stand around for ages, let a goal in and become dejected. One soccer coaching tactic to help you improve this situation is to keep your goalkeeper as active as possible during matches.
Keeping the goalie active includes encouraging them to take goal kicks, as it gets them to concentrate on passing and using angles to get the ball to team-mates. It's also useful to be able to keep your goalkeeper active in cold weather.
You may be worried that your young goalkeeper doesn't have a big kick, but it is down to you to compensate for this and come up with tactics the goalkeeper can use to solve this problem.
Tactics to help your goalkeeper
One option is to move your full backs out wide. Or, if the ball is in the goalkeeper's hands, get them to throw over-arm in a bowling motion to accurately get the ball to a team-mate.
There is nothing worse for a goalkeeper than looking at a sea of opposition shirts in front of them when taking kicks. So make sure your players move and get in front of the opposition, to give your goalkeeper more confidence.
Ready for 11-a-side
One of the huge benefits you will find if you take a team through 7-a-side to 11-a-side is the goal kick tactics they have practised will be far more useful than just relying on a big kick.
You often find at 11-a-side that even big kickers initially find it hard to get kicks very far past the penalty area, and the ball is continually given away.
Goalkeeper distribution
When you play in small-sided soccer or football tournaments, the movement and distribution of the goalkeeper can often be the deciding factor between winning and losing.
As mentioned already, a big kick can give the ball away. Whereas a tactical roll out or pass to a defender means the team is up and running with the ball and can start attacks from their own half.
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Click here for a soccer drill to work on your goalkeeper's distribution skills.
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