You hear announcers, coaches, and people around the game talk about goalkeeper confidence all the time. More specifically you hear them talk about goalkeepers who don’t have confidence in their game. Confidence is such an ambiguous concept, yet it’s so vital to goalkeeping. The truth about goalkeeper confidence is that only the person who is standing between the sticks knows exactly what’s going on in their head. However, usually when we see a goalkeeper that is lacking in confidence you can tell by body movements and the mistakes that he or she makes. The number one thing that I want to get across here is that any of us can lose some confidence from time to time for a variety of reasons.
Personally one of the lowest for myself came about right after I was making my return to the pitch from a head injury. The injury happened on the field as an error in communication with my defense caused us to but heads after trying to clear a ball outside the box. What followed was a lot of blood, and a trip to the emergency room. Naturally, when I came back on the field only about a week later my confidence was just not there! I played a terrible game across the board. Plus, I was like 16 at the time, there’s a lot going on in your head around those ages that you don’t necessarily control. How do you get back to what you once were, or how do you improve your goalkeeper confidence beyond your usual levels?
Why Goalkeeper Confidence Is Important?
This question may be a bit unnecessary, particularly for those of you who clicked on the article in the first place. What I really want to go over though in this paragraph is what confidence dictates for goalkeepers. When you really look into it you find out that it dictates virtually everything. For those goalkeepers who are trying to earn a spot on a new team or take that next step in their careers a lack of confidence is usually going to bleed through and permeate to your teammates, and the scouts. At the same time, if you have confidence in yourself that’s going to show, and that’s going to help you overcome even some of the deficiencies that you may have.
Really if we’re talking about why confidence is important it’s exactly because of what I just mentioned. It shows on the field, when you have it and when you don’t. Now, you really can’t build confidence without building up your skills. That’s the tricky part, because for example a lack of confidence can make you afraid to come out and cut a cross. If you’ve never done that before though, then how are you going to be confident in your abilities? Goalkeeping is a mental, and physical position, and you really have to combine the two. Otherwise, you’re always going to be a little bit short on one or the other. Again, that’s going to show up on film, even how you react to mistakes dictates your confidence level.
What Can Break Your Confidence?
At the end of the day this is really a personal question. There are things that may shake my confidence, but will do nothing to you and vice versa. Usually though, we’re able to find common ground. The obvious ones are mistakes during games, particularly if you mess up in a key moment. To be honest, there’s not a lot that you can do, but get the ball out of the net, and pick your head up, and get ready for the next play. That’s what you can do in the moment, try not to dwell on the situation, because then what usually happens is that you’ll try and force a save in another play. That usually doesn’t end up well, and you could be staring at back to back mistakes.
Keep the image in the back of your mind though, because this is something that you’re going to want to work on the next time that you get on the practice field. Another thing that can break your confidence is being yelled at by a coach or your teammates after a mistake. I don’t like yelling at my players at all, and that’s not because I’m soft or anything. I feel that they are the first ones to know they made the mistake so why would I come down hard on them even more? When this happens, take the good criticism and ignore the ill-advised criticism. Definitely this is easier said than done, particularly because you have to put it behind you at the moment, and as a goalkeeper you may get a ton of time with your thoughts after a mistake.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Goalkeeping is so awkward in the sense that you even have to practice making mistakes. What do I mean by that? You really won’t know how you’re going to react to a mistake in a big game until you make one. All this talk about putting those things past you are things that you can only learn until they happen to you, and you figure out what works best for you when it comes to dealing with a mistake. You have to figure out what your way to respond to a disgruntled teammate or coach is. On a personal level that potentially cost me my career. I got in a fight with a coach, and said screw it, I’m done playing here. Looking back I lost more than he did with that reaction because I left a team in the youth ranks.
Now, it’s not just mental mistakes that you can potentially make. If you’re having some literal technical difficulties you have to jot those down. As I mentioned, forget about it at that moment. There’s nothing that you can do about a play that has already passed. However, you’re going to want to replicate the scenario in training as many times as you can for the next couple sessions. That way if it comes up in a game again you’re going to know what to do. Having to revisit those situations where you made the mistakes in training and correcting them is the only way I’ve ever seen it work. It’s kind of fitting to say this in an article about goalkeeper confidence because it’s exactly like going to therapy. You have to face and acknowledge your insecurities to correct them.
Being Honest About Your Insecurities With Your Goalkeeper Coach
If you want to be more confident in your abilities you have to train hard, and particularly work on your flaws. The first thing that you want to do is let your goalkeeper coach know what you feel that you’re struggling with. Now, I have to be really honest here, that’s hard to do a lot of times with your team’s goalkeeper coach or just your team coach. More often than not we don’t want those guys to know about goalkeeper confidence. I always say there are coaches out there that don’t get goalkeepers at all. If you’re serious about trying to elevate your career maybe a college team or try your luck in the pros get yourself a goalkeeper coach.
There are different ways that you can go about this. I know that in certain countries this can be an expensive investment, that’s not necessarily the case in Mexico, Central and South America though. Depending on how expensive it may be you can work out with other goalkeepers outside of your team. Again though, the key is to be active with the coach letting them know what you feel that you need to work on. If you can get personal lessons that’s going to work better for sure. That’s going to allow both of you to craft a plan that is tailored to your insecurities. A lot of times team coaches or goalkeeper coaches for a team don’t work on specific issues, they have a lesson plan, and they just stick to it and don’t care who learns. It’s just like school looking for a tutor!
Fake It Till You Make It?
Could we say that this is good advice? I’ve always been told you have to look the part first to be the part. Really, I actually talked about this when discussing what scouts look for, and you can fake it for a game, and try to hide your deficiencies. That is one of the things that you may have to do when you’re going to try-outs and things like that. I wouldn’t say that this is good long term advice. Then again it’s not like any of the top goalkeepers in the world are going out there and talking about their insecurities. It is a situation where goalkeeper confidence is in essence a myth!
What I mean by that is, you can’t really let other people know that you’re not confident in yourself. Let me amend this, you can’t let everyone know. That’s why I just finished saying that hiring a personal goalkeeper trainer makes sense. What you want to create is a safe haven where what you’re doing is going over the deficiencies that you know you have in your game. When you’re actually in a game, or in practice with your team you do sometimes have to fake it until you make it. Since that’s the case having that safe where you can actually build your goalkeeper confidence becomes way more important. If you’re just a fake the whole time and you don’t really work on your flaws people are eventually going to see right through you.
What To Do After Major Setbacks?
This really is where building good goalkeeper confidence is going to help you out. You have to know ahead of time that things aren’t always going to go your way. Plus, in goalkeeping particularly as you’re moving up the ranks mistakes happen and happen often. As I mentioned before, what you don’t want to do is try and overcompensate. In the sense that you’re forcing the action to make a save to wash away the mistake. I’m going to go into a bit of cliché, but stay focused and let the game come to you. As you keep playing it’s more likely that the mistake is going to fade into the memory. There’s really nothing that you can do after the play has happened. You have to keep playing.
When it’s a very big moment and you make a mistake I would say the best thing that you can do is get back on the training ground as soon as you can. Even if you’re still dwelling on the mistake you’re potentially doing something to correct it. One of the worst feelings in the world is to make a mistake and then have days pass when you’re still thinking about it. What’s frustrating sometimes about goalkeeping is that you again can’t force your second chance. In training though you can take out some of that rage, to the mentally get to a point where you’ve trained the scenario and feel confident getting back out there.
Goalkeeper Confidence – Conclusion
I promised in the title that I would reveal some secrets on how to build your goalkeeper confidence. Really there’s no trick you building it through training, and relying on those abilities that you learn in training on the field. A lot of the things that you’ll do end up being innate. When people talk about reflex saves that are usually built in the training ground they are not lucky. Once you’ve trained your body enough you’ll have the tools to encounter any situation that you face.
The toughest times though are those right after the mistake. Really the best thing that you can do is to realize quickly that mistakes are going to happen. The only way that you’re going to be able to minimize them is again through training. At the end of the day also remember that no matter how serious things get particularly as you move up in your career, it’s still just a game. That hopefully helps you get through some of the tough times that do come.