I decided to start some reflections on some topics related to the sport I play, Handball, in the context of my country Portugal.
My first reflection will be on the position I've played for 17 years, which is the position of goalkeeper and it's always a controversial position.
From a very early age I began to hear the following phrase: “In a handball team, the goalkeeper is 50% of a team.” being my position and knowing the role we have in the game I agree with her.
During these 17 years of sport I heard several coaches, managers and directors say this statement but do these same people care and encourage that training has significant time for specific goalkeeper training? Do coaches use players with enough quality to be goalkeepers?
Let's see some facts:
This premise is a cultural contradiction of our sporting roots. When we play football with friends as a child, the most skillful ones always end up being field players and whoever goes to goal is usually someone who doesn't have a natural aptitude for the sport or someone who isn't very skillful.
When we move to a different register of federated club in the youth ranks it is not much different.
What coach would give up a tall player who can score several goals to put him in the goal where he could even become even better than a field player?
Currently, no one.
At this moment, for the coaches of the academy, what is left is going to the goal and not what has great potential at the start.
This goes against the phrase that a goalkeeper is 50% of a team, as each of the 6 remaining athletes on a team represents at best 8.33%.
Bearing this in mind, why is it that such an important position continues to be forgotten.
One more point that we should reflect on is, during training, are the coaches or clubs concerned about having enough time for specific goalkeeper training? I can say that in 17 years of sport that I have only had in the last 3 I had a dedicated goalkeeper coach and that all training had time reserved to work with them but this was already at the senior level. At this point, it's too late to correct goal techniques and even positioning, because we're talking about trained goalkeepers and that if we try to change some of the aspects, 95% of the time he will have an inferior performance or he will never practice. this techniques due to not being comfortable with them.
The fact that goalkeepers during training are “forgotten” and do not have specific training means that for years there have been no national goalkeepers who manage to take revenge on the first division teams. This makes clubs hire foreign goalkeepers and of course our team can be harmed by this whole situation.
I conclude that one of the two: either the goalkeeper, after all, does not actually represent 50% of a handball team or else we have to rethink our entire handball culture, training methodology, recruitment and motivational stimuli, adapting them. in order to maximize this player who is often (too many!) lost between the goal posts. Not to mention the numerous criticisms from coaches and fans to which he is subject, making him a scapegoat for collective failure. After all, it is a position that is very easy to criticize.
I still believe that the goalkeeper is really 50% of a team, so I think clubs should reflect on these points.
