Goalkeeper Watch Week Ten

Goalkeepers are a funny bunch – often unnoticed, often under-appreciated, and often misunderstood. Goalkeeper Watch shines the spotlight – good, or bad – on the men between the sticks.

The Goalkeeper Watch spotlight has only been on English professional football thus far in the series. This time, however, the norm is being diverted from England as it’s the Bundesliga that stands in the limelight.

Germany’s top flight is arguably the European league most similar to the Premier League, in terms of style, atmosphere, and football culture. Perhaps this is because German culture, language, and lifestyle is more or less similar to that of England – perhaps the most of any country on the continent, aside from the Netherlands.

It’s only natural that this filters down into sporting culture, and the Bundesliga, much like the Premier League, isn’t full of the tikka-taka precision play of Spain, Italy, and even France, to an extent. The game tends to be a little more physical. A little more direct. A little more…hard-hitting.

Germany also have a fantastic reputation for developing world-class goalkeepers.

It’s no wonder that we’ve finally ended up in central Europe for Goalkeeper of the Week. On Sunday 24th, struggling Schalke 04 faced off against Hans-Dieter Flick’s Bayern Munich.

Cutting to the chase, the result was plainly abysmal for Schalke who were thrashed 4-0 by the reigning Champions.

However, if any Schalke starter came out of the tie with an ounce of credit, it was goalkeeper Ralf Fahrmann. Even though several of Bayern’s star-studded eleven caught the eye, Schalke could have very easily found themselves back in the game if it wasn’t for various parts of Manuel Neuer’s body.

The most eye-catching save of the afternoon was Neuer’s fantastic reaction stop from attacking midfielder Mark Uth. To quote the commentary cliché book, the German goalkeeper had ‘no right to make the save’.

From a technical standpoint, there was actually very little he did right. His feet are off the floor as the ball makes contact with Uth’s head, his momentum is moving to his left, and he’s leaning back as the header powers towards goal.

Nevertheless, Neuer pulls off a sublime reaction save, proving the importance of simply spreading oneself when making saves. Covering as much of the goal of possible will never negatively affect the outcome of a save attempt.

Fahrmann drew level with a good double save from Robert Lewandowski and Serge Gnabry later in the game.

Neuer and Fahrmann, whilst not necessarily on-par in terms of ability or career accomplishments, both have one thing in common; their respective styles are unorthodox, to put it lightly.

Goalkeeping is subjective, and no part more so than what the ‘correct’ technique looks like. Neuer and Fahrmann’s technique wouldn’t have been taught at a goalkeeping school, but there is an increasing general acceptance of the principle of ‘if you make the save, you’ve made the save’ in the goalkeeping community.

Despite the ‘poor’ (so to speak) technique, the Schalke goalkeeper does two things well – both of which are often overlooked.

He gets up quickly, which may seem simple, but too many goalkeepers (especially at youth level) simply see the first save through, and then stay on the floor.
He uses his feet to make the second save – purely instinctive – and doesn’t try to make a select save, rather just stop the ball.

The German shot-stoppers both made several more saves during the ninety, most of which are in the linked clips.

If we are to take anything from a match that, in reality, may not be remembered past the end of this season by either team, it’s this:

In-form teams need good goalkeepers. Struggling teams need good goalkeepers. Teams can get away with one slightly below-par midfielder out of four or five, for example, but it’s the goalkeeper who simply has to perform, week in, week out. Otherwise, the table will look very different. Neuer and Fahrmann proved that on Sunday.

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