Les Sparks Goalkeeping Drill Page - Dealing with Breakaways

Breakaways can be the most fun part of being goalkeeper. Nothing is more fun than stuffing a striker who is sure that she is going to score. And nothing lifts your defense and whole team more than stuffing the striker.

The first thing to remember about dealing with breakaways is that the pressure is on the striker--she is supposed to beat you. There is no pressure on you. So be confident.

Dealing with breakaways begins before the breakaway ever happens. You must constantly pay attention to the game and how it is developing. And you must be aware of where the last defender is and concentrate on the space between you and the defender. You must be able to control this space. If you can control this space, you can avoid having to deal with a great many breakaways.

The key to dealing with breakaways is aggressive play. You must be ready and willing to commit to exploding off the line with these objectives:

Option 1 is get to the ball before the attacker does. (See dealing with through balls)

Option 2 is get to the ball before the attacker shoots. Many times an attacker will make a mistake and allow the ball to get away from her before she shoots. This is the time to get the ball.

Option 3 is get the ball as soon as she shoots.

Option 4 is get the ball just after she shoots.

As you can see the whole idea of dealing with breakaways is to get to the ball as soon as possible. If you can not get to the ball before the attacker does, get out to a spot where you leave the attacker a little of the goal to shoot out as possible. Take up a well balanced position and force the attacker into an error. Make the attacker commit first. You must retain the ability to change the speed and direction of your attack on the ball. Even in mid-air. This ability is often what separates the good from the excellent keepers.

When you are going 1 v 1 remember that you can use your hands. So, when you dive cover the near post with your hands and the far post with you legs and feet. The dive should be a parallel dive. Attacking players try to avoid shooting at a keeper's hands. So they will often shoot wide of the near post in an attempt to keep the ball away from your hands. Attackers are also afraid of the keepers feet and legs, so if they go far post, they will often attempt to go wide around you. This gains time for your defense to recover. And often the attacker will kick the ball out of bounds.

Avoid attacking feet first. When you attack feet first, you reduce the area of the goal you can cover. This puts you in a position that makes it difficult to recover for a second attack on the ball.

Because it is scary going at an attacker's feet with your hand (and also your face), many keepers attack feet first. Work with a friend at slow speed to develop the technique of attacking with your hands first. When you are comfortable with the idea, have your friend pick up the speed.

Good luck.

Additional comments on dealing with breakaways

The best way to deal with breakaways and 1 v 1 situations is to prevent them by controlling the space between the keeper and the last defender. If this fails, then you need to prevent the goal. Here are some tips for dealing with the situation.

1. Attack the shooter by coming out hard and low and under control. You come out low to force the shooter to shot high. That's the lowest precentage chance for the attacker. Dont' get beat low.

2. If the attacker tries to chip you, leap forward and attack the ball. This reduces the angle available to the shooter and give you the best chance to make the save. Be sure that you leap forward and not back or straight up. If you lead back or lean back away from the shot, you give up more of the goal. If you watch lots of soccer, you'll see that many keepers lean back in this situation. You don't want to do this. Remember attack the ball.

Drills for decision making on coming out for the ball

The decision making process of a goalkeeper in coming out of the box after a ball must be learned, but Joe DeMay, GK Coach for the Youngstown State University women's program and for Mahoning Valley Premier FC has provided a set of drills to help the GK learn to make the proper decisions. Give these drills a try at your next practice.

"This is a tough situation to fully replicate in a training session, but there are a couple drills that can help. When I say it is tough to fully replicate I mean that a lot of the decision making process is left out....you can do all three of these drills as much as you want but they never make up for match experience (which for the GK is the most important thing, perhaps more so than any other player on the field).

Anyway, these drills can be changed, enhanced, etc. to any extent, I'm just going to present them in their basic form.

Drill 1

The first one is really simple and has a few variations. You need a server around the mid circle and a line of attackers about 10-15 yards in front of the server (the distance will vary on the type of ball being served. The server plays the ball long (ground, air, bouncing, doesn't matter), the attacker runs to it to try and play it, and the GK must decide what to do. The options are fairly simple: a) come out to the top of the box to collect before attacker gets there b) come out of box to clear it before the attacker can run on to it c) challenge the attacker with the ball at his/her feet at the top of the box or d) stay back a bit and wait for the attacker to get further into the box before challenging. The elements that go into the decision the GK makes are quite numerous. The speed of the ball, the speed of the pitch, the speed of the attacker, the speed of the GK, the strengths and stature of the GK, any information on the attacker the GK might know (left footed, likes to chip on breakaways, favorite move, etc.), the relative position of defenders and trailing attackers, how well the attacker has the ball under control, the angle of the attacker's approach, how composed the attacker looks if the ball is at his/her feet to name most of them. Seems like a lot and almost impossible to do in a split second, but as GK I've got at least that much going through my head when I see a potential breakaway coming. If I make a mistake on any one of those judgments I can usually tell you exactly which on it is as the ball is flying (or rolling) toward the back of the net. Not a good time to figure it out, but realizing your mistakes is a great teacher.

Anyway, you can add variations to this by adding a trailing defender, a defender coming from the side, etc. You can also vary the service points, that is, serve it from the flanks with the attackers coming from the same position.
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Drill 2

The second drill can involve the whole team, which I know GK love because it makes them feel more involved with the team. Divide the players up into 3 or four lines of 4-6 (depending on your squad size, of course) about 25-35 yards from goal. The first player stands with his/her back toward the goal, legs spread shoulder width apart, and a ball between their feet. The second player taps the ball between the legs of the first player, the first player turns to attack goal and the second player chases as a defender. It's a clear breakaway, so the GK needs to decide how and when to come out. The possibility that the defender might recover to challenge for the ball also exists. It's unlikely that the defender will recover to get the ball, but you should stress to them to recover to a position behind the onrushing GK to cover their line should a ball slip by. This may be a bit advanced for some age groups, but it's something that may be useful one day. On the club team I play with I happen to have the luxury of playing with the sweeper I played with since I was 14 so we know each other pretty well. On breakaways we know each other well enough that I delay the attacker long enough to allow Josh (my sweeper) to get into position should I not be able to come up with the ball. Once he has arrived at that spot I can now attack the ball with the comfort of knowing I have help behind me. I snuff out enough breakaways on my own, but I cannot count the number of times Josh has cleared the ball off my line. It's much better going in for a ball knowing I've got some help back on my goal line. Ok, probably a lot more info than any of you wanted:))).

The variations on this one are fairly simple. Have both players sit, kneel, lay down and on a signal of your designation get up and score/defend. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that you designate line numbers for each line and you call out which number goes next, that way it makes things a little less predictable for everybody.
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Drill 3

The final thing, that most closely replicates match related play (besides full scrimmaging) is 1 v 1 and 2 v 2 either in the box or on a 25 or 30 x 20 field. Even if you go with two goals on the small field, let the players on both teams attack at either goal, it will create a lot more breakaway type of situations. Don't concentrate too much on what the field players are doing, focus on the GK's decisions and technique. There are tons of different ways to set this up to get what you want. Sometimes I'll set up and arc (with field marking paint) in front of the goal (similar to the three point arc in Bball) and tell the attackers they can only score from INSIDE the arc. This insures that the attackers will be dribbling at the GK and taking shots at close range, which forces him/her to decide if they're staying back or coming out.

Hope this helped. There are other drills, but these are the best ones and they're also easy to incorporate into a full team practice as I know most of you aren't afforded the luxury of a GK coach. Any questions will gladly be answered."

Later, Joe