Football punditry is more detailed than ever but it still fails goalkeepers

We’re told that goalkeepers are different. It’s a position for eccentrics. Perhaps that is why our knowledge of the keeper’s role is so poor. Rich Lee, a goalkeeper best known for his spells at Watford and Brentford, wants to change that. His Twitter bio reads: “Man on a mission to banish the term ‘wrong hand’ from a pundit’s glossary.”

“My biggest frustration is that the punditry you hear is often misguided,” says Lee. “I don’t just want to pile in, but it’s D grade, E grade stuff.” Lee’s fundamental issue is that we are framing the position incorrectly. From the sidelines it’s easy to consider the role of a goalkeeper is a wholly reactive one. A shot is taken, a goalkeeper saves it. A cross comes in, a goalkeeper catches it. Their careers are spent operating on the edge of failure, and success is simply maintaining the status quo.

However, Lee speaks of goalkeeping in proactive terms – the primary role is to prevent opportunities from occurring, not to save them after the fact. “If you’re a top goalkeeper your level of communication is so high that you are effectively orchestrating what’s going on in front of you, as you’re seeing things before they happen. You’re seeing runners, potential through balls – your starting position is so good that you’re cutting things out at source.”

Kasper Schmeichel agrees. Pundits make the mistake of writing off goalkeepers’ good games as merely quiet ones, but Schmeichel says his best games are the ones where he goes unnoticed as that means he and his defence have been in perfect tandem. “The morning after the game people get a grade out of 10,” said Schmeichel on the High Performance podcast. “I might look at it and think: that’s a 10 out of 10. Communication was fantastic, great