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Goalkeepers Should Be Good With Their Hands, Not Their Feet
Ball-playing keeper trend is driving me crazy
As someone who watches professional soccer games every week, there is one trend that drives me crazy. And that is the new trend of goalkeepers playing the ball out with their feet. It goes against everything I was taught and learned growing up watching and playing the game over the last 50 years.
When I was growing up, it was common knowledge that soccer players who were bad with their feet were put in goal during pick-up games. This is where they could cause the least problems. I remember in pee-wee games, keepers being so bad at kicking, that goal kicks were taken by obliging defenders.
But in 1992, FIFA made a rule change that prevented goalkeepers from picking the ball up from a back pass from their own players. This change was made to speed up the game after the dismal 1990 World Cup finals, where several teams, including Argentina, who made it to the final, played for draws.
Football writer Jonathan Wilson discussed this in his book “The Outsider.” He writes: “A general rethink about the laws of the game had been prompted by the negativity of the 1990 World Cup and, in particular one passage of play in the group match between the Republic of Ireland and Egypt in which the Irish keeper…
