During today's shootout, on almost all the shots, the goalie dove one way and the ball went the other way. Obviously this happens sometimes because the kicker feints or something, but it seemed to happen with surprising frequency today.
I haven't been watching that much World Cup this year because most games happen while I'm at the office so I don't have that big of a corpus to draw on, but is this normal? Most of the games I watch involve Germany, and German goalkeepers seem to be drawn to the ball like a magnet. Are my German goalies just exceptionally good, or was today's shootout an example of exeptionally poor goalkeeping?
1 comment:
Actually, Barthez and Buffon are two of the greatest keepers around (though I'm never that confident in Barthez -- he makes some ridiculous fumbles from time to time). Buffon is especially good at stopping PKs.
Basically, a PK is taken from so close to the goal that it's impossible for a keeper to react based on the way the ball moves. So the keeper guesses, and moves before he can see how the ball is struck.
Before the match, the keepers and coaches have made extensive notes on how each player on the other team typically takes kicks, where he's stronger and weaker, that kind of thing. There's all the levels of psychology that go along with that, of course. And the keeper also reads, as you surmised, how the player approaches the ball to see if there are any clues as to where he'll place it.
Incidentally, the keeper can move along the goal line as much as he likes before the ball is kicked, but cannot move off the line until the ball is struck. Some keepers (like Canada's former star, Craig Forrest) dance back and forth along the line to try to put the player off his game.
As to your actual question -- Germany's keepers are quite good, and their coaching staff is good too -- you might be seeing an edge in their ability to predict which way a player will shoot. I think it's about an 80% chance that a player will score, though, and a couple of lucky guesses in one game will make a keeper look really good.
Hope this helps answer the question!
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