Goalkeepers in women’s football – and what is fair criticism?

Welcome to Moving the Goalposts, the Guardian’s new (and free) women’s football newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version once a week, just pop your email in below.

“I’ve seen better keeping in Sunday League”; “They need smaller goals” - these are just a couple of the comments aimed at female goalkeepers across social media even after the most spectacular of goals. Millie Bright v Ellie Roebuck in the 2020 Community Shield and Mollie Green v Watford in the recent FA Championship relegation decider are the ones that immediately come to mind.

It would be easy to say the negativity is just part of the toxic online world where it is “on trend” to denigrate the women’s game. But in truth, it is an opinion that permeates into even the most experienced of pundits. This is not to say that criticism should not exist – goalkeepers inevitably make mistakes and those should be highlighted – but on many occasions, the context of where the sport is currently at is lacking. Female keepers are also viewed, as Everton goalkeeping coach Ian McCaldon sees it, through a male lens where “the people who are commenting on it, all they do is watch men’s football”.

With the popularity of the women’s game having grown relatively quickly, it is easy to forget how young a professional sport it is. When Rachel Brown-Finnis, England’s former No 1, joined Everton in 2003 “goalkeeper coaches were not a guarantee. I was in the top league and playing for England, and I didn’t always have a goalkeeper coach. That was probably replicated across the whole league.”

Crystal Palace’s goalkeeper, Chloe Morgan, had a similar experience. She began to receive specific training to hone her skillset only a couple of years