How To Power Up Your Penalty Saving Ability!
With all the talk about Pepe Reina and his show stopping penalty ability during the Champions League, many goalkeeper's have praised and others have a slightly skewed view about the goalkeepers penalty saving technique. One article gave a great insight into many former Premier League goalkeeper's point of view in regards to the art of penalty saving. One comment in particular by Professor Tom Reilly at Liverpool John Moores Univeristy gave some insight into the science behind a goalkeepers ability to attack a penalty save more effectively.
"On average it takes around 600 milliseconds for a ball to travel from the penalty spot to past the goalline. A goalkeeper will not be able to respond to that and so has to make a decision before the ball is kicked as to what he will do. They've got to anticipate by about 100 milliseconds and if they haven't made their decision 100 milliseconds before the player makes contact with the ball then it's too late."
Apart from this the professor points to some fantastic points in regards to how goalkeepers develop the power of "anticipation", and other factors that are important to the development of a goalkeeper, some of these include:
- Great goalkeepers have a sixth sense about a penalty situation and how to react to it.
- Development of penalty stopping skills are produced from a very young age, with expert goalkeeping advice.
- Intuition plays a major role in penalty situations, and again, this is created at a very early age.
- Psychology is extremely important in helping to sidetrack any attackers attempt on goal.
Overall, nothing is as powerful as repetition, and with great coaching and continual repetition of fundamental goalkeeping technique at an early age, every goalkeeper should be able to come off with Reina-like ability!
Looking for a way to maximize your goalkeeping technique? Sign up for "10 Weeks To Goalkeeping Success" for free here.
John Stevanja
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Reader Comments (3)
Technically speaking.....shouldn't Roben's pen have been retaken?!
A gk isn't allowed to move off his line right? Yet so many do without punishment these days!
Great save though :P
On the other hand, if they move blatantly before the strike, then this is a different ball game all together.
As the article above states, it really depends on split second timing, and sometimes it is hard to notice, or even rectify in a high intensity match.
It's a tough one isn't it?