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The Specialist: The Save

February 17th, 2009 | By: Jan | 20 Comments »

Vermeer in action

Every young player dreams about making a super goal, so every young goalie will dream about that wonder save… That “glanzparade”. Ajax goalie Kenneth Vermeer (22) about the art of keeping a clean sheet: “As a goalie, the only thing you focus on is pre-empting that you have to make that save…”

The Legend
He’s the only keeper so far (Van der Star?) selected as the European Football Player of the Year (1963). Lev Yashin. Born in Moscow and player of Dinamo Moscow. Yashin was a football goal keeper and a hockey goal keeper at the same time. Yashin had personality, ruled the box and had tremendous reflexes. He won five titles, three national cups and was capped 78 times. He won the European Championship in 1960 and played three World Cups with his country. He always wore black, resulting in his nickname, The Black Spider and was a specialist penalty-killer. According to legend, he stopped 150 (!!) penalties. He died in 1990 and was crowned the best goal keeper of the 20est Century.

The Save
Was it the hardest or in fact the most beautiful save ever? The WC 1970. England played one of the most legendary games against Brazil. Jairzinho thundred forward and crossed the ball in. At the far post, legend Pele headed the ball via the pitch on goal. Gordon Banks flew to the left post and tipped the ball away with his right hand. Kenneth Vermeer never saw Banks make that save. “For me, Jerzy Dudek had the best save ever. Finals CL, in 2005. AC Milan vs Liverpool. The famous 3-3 game. It was 3-3 at the time, and Shevchenko headed the ball on goal from 5 meters. Dudek blocked the ball but in Shevchenko’s stride, who shot on goal from 2 meters, this time. And again it was Dudek, with a massive reflex… Pfff, he stopped that ball, but I don’t think he knew he did. But these are the moments. There’s a keeper making the difference between winning or losing. Everyone thought it was 3-4. I’m sure Shevchenko thought he’d scored….”

The Dutch Goalies
In the 1960s and 1970s Holland started to deliver some greats. Eddie Pieters Graafland (who played for Ajax and Feyenoord), Gert Bals, Tonnie van Leeuwen, Ton Thie… Big names. Followed closely by Jan van Beveren, Pim Doesburg, Heinz Stuy… Pim Doesburg is one of Holland’s longest-working keeper-trainers: “In my days, it was keeping on the streets. Literally diving for the ball on the cobblestones. When we trained, it was purely training in the goal. In the mud, the rain… They called us crazy, and I think we were.” Most goalies in those days, were so-called line-goalies. Eddie Treytel, Piet Schrijvers, Theo Snelders…those lads weren’t able to play football, they just stopped the ball from going in. When Michels/Cruyff came up with “Total Football”, it meant dominating play, fore-checking and pressing… Which meant that there was a huge space behind the defenders. The man for the job in Oranje was normally an Ajax or Feyenoord goalie (Stuy, Schrijvers, Treytel) but Michels picked an a-typical goalie from FC Amsterdam: Jan Jongbloed. Because the man could play with his feet.

Holland would produce many a great goalie. Some would rule on their reflexes (Joop Hiele, later Ed de Goey), others would simply rule the box, Yashin-style, like Hans van Breukelen. And there was that category of great football-playing goalies – at Ajax of course – such as Stanley Menzo.

Edwin van der Sar came to the scene when Menzo was the first man in goal at Ajax. Van der Sar had it all, experts said: elegance, football-skills, reflexes, length… He only missed….charisma. But when Menzo blatantly failed in a European game, Sar got his go and would soon push De Goey out of Oranje. It seems like yesterday…

The Training
Those “Doesburg” days in the mud are gone. Goalies do much more at training than simply stopping balls. Keepers participate in positioning and passing exercises and other technical training models. Kenneth Vermeer: “Stopping goal attempts is maybe 5% of the job during a game, still we do most of our trainingswork on that. Which does make sense… You can play a perfect game coaching and passing and all that, but when you don’t stop that one ball, you can lose a game… Training is normally physically exhausting. With games it’s more mentally. You need to be totally concentrated all the time, for that one situation, in particular when you play for Ajax.”
Lev Yashin said that concentration was the keeper’s strongest weapon. “A goalkeeper will never shrug his shoulders when he conceded a goal. Whatever the situation, a goalie will be devastated when the opponents scored,” the Russian legend once said.
Kenneth Vermeer agrees 100%. “A keeper isn’t looking at that wondersave. A real good goalie is totally focused at not conceding a goal. No matter how…”

The Most Beautiful One
Does a goalie dream of a wondersave? “I don’t,” Vermeer said. “You’re always 100% busy with trying to avoid to make a save. That’s the most important role of the goalie. Organizing, reading the game, coaching. A goal keeper should be one with the defenders. At Ajax, you maybe have to act three times in 90 minutes. It’s not about that. It’s about what you can do to stop the opponent getting in a position to force you to act. One example… At the Olympics against Nigeria for instance. A winger broke through and I saw a striker unmarked… I yelled at my defender to block the striker a bit. The cross came and the striker had trouble getting to the ball, because of our defender’s positioning. I could come and took the ball easily. Not a spectacular save at all. But it was the result of anticipation and teamwork. If I hadn’t had done that, maybe the striker would have forced me to tip the ball spectacularly over the bar and everyone would have said: wow, look at Vermeer. How good is he? But it wasn’t necessary to let it come so far. But the audience doesn’t really acknowledge your role in such a situation. They’ll probably say: what a bad cross by Nigeria!

For me, that situation was cool. Much cooler than having to stretch myself…”

Tags: De Goey, Group C, Holland, Menzo, Sar, Vermeer, Yashin

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Comments

By Alex | February 17th, 2009 at 7:32 am

Completely off-tpoic I was just browsing through Chelsea reserve articles. And it seems Jeffrey Bruma is already highly rated as a central defender at only 17.

Posted from Netherlands

By ian | February 17th, 2009 at 11:50 am

Aisatti is back from injury

By Caleb | February 17th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

Speaking of keepers, is it just me, or do you guys agree that PSV’s keeper is pretty bad… going from Gomes to Isaksson… what a difference!

Posted from Canada

By Jan | February 17th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

Yeah, I don’t think Isaksson wins games for PSV. Gomes did.

Apparently, AZ has a cracker. Romero, 22 year old Argentine.

By dirk v.d.Berg | February 17th, 2009 at 5:04 pm

Wasn’t Romero the keeper who helped Argentina win the u-20 world cup 2 years ago. I think that Cassio Ramos on PSV will end up being the best of them all.

Off topic again, has anyone heard of a Dutch defender named Glenn Loovens, he plays for Celtic.

Posted from Canada

By finnster01 | February 17th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

Just an observation. This is highly subjective and may just very well be my mad brains doing a figment of my own imagination, but I think that we are in a “recession” of goal keepers. Yes, EVDS, Casillas and Buffon are wonderful and skillful keepers, but as far back as I can remember there was always that 1 goalkeeper that was just heads-and-shoulders above the rest.

Doesn’t seem to be like that anymore. I mean back in the day (even before my time believe it or not) there were one dominant one. You had Yashin. Then you had Gordon Banks, Dino Zoff, Sepp Maier, Ray Clemence, Peter Shilton, Schumacher the criminal, even Taffarel, Grumpy old Kahn, maybe even Bartez, and so on. I probably missed someone. My point is there were one or two outstanding ones that could win games on their own, not just make saves. I think now adays those days are someone gone. Especially if you look beyond the Casillas, EVDS etc., there really isn’t much coming through the ranks is there?

By dirk v.d.Berg | February 17th, 2009 at 7:52 pm

Well Guillermo Ochoa is supposed to be the best in the world and he’s only 23, so I’d say he’s the future of goaltending. Seeing as he’s already made 2 or 3 FIFA covers (the video game), I think he’s already pretty highly rated. He’s yet to win a Copa Libertadores, or make a big impact with Mexico, but it will probably be him.

Christopher Tosselli is an up and coming Chilean who really impressed 2 years ago at the u-20 world cup, setting an u-20 world cup record, he’s expected to be big, and so is Radek Petr of the Czech Republic. A couple others people might have heard of are Portugal’s Rui Patricio, and Denmark’s Kasper Schmeichel, who both get regular minutes at their clubs.

Overall the best young keeper in the world is Guillermo Ochoa, who I would rank among the top 10 in the world right now.

Posted from Canada

By finnster01 | February 17th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

@Dirk: That is interesting info. Thanks for that. I must admit I haven’t followed Ochoa too much but of course I have read about him. The little I have seen, I have found him not that spectacular though but I only have a small sample to judge from. He also has 10 years to develop before he hits his prime so if he is anybit as good as they claim, I am sure we’ll see a lot more of him.

Kasper Schmeichel is highly overrated. He doesn’t get any time at Man City, especially after they signed Shay Given. He will be gone in the summer. He also was behind Joe Hart in the pecking order and when he was on loan at Coventry didn’t do well at all. However, he was more successful at Cardiff on loan and was supposed to join them permanently but that fell through when Joe Hart got injured. Despite his famous father, I don’t think he will be a great one, although he is still young too (23).

Also on the great goalie front, I forgot to include Jan Tomaszewski, the great Pole from the “WC1974 all mustache” team Also known as “The man that stopped England”. He was another great one.

By mario | February 17th, 2009 at 9:59 pm

dirk v.d.Berg:

Hello my friend, I can tell you a little bit more about Guillermo Ochoa.

He is 23 years old as you say and in my country he already has made a big impact. Everybody knows in México that he is the best goalkeeper of the nation but the only one who doesn´t know that is Mr. Sven Goran Eriksson because Eriksoon still fields as starter an old gk named Oswaldo Sánchez that I recognized he is pretty good but his best years have passed and Ochoa is the best goalie in México since he was 19 years old. He was the goalie of the national team under the reing of Hugo Sánchez but now that Eriksson coaches us he has been in the bench and one of the main critics that Sven has received is that he has given many chances to start to young lads like Giovanni dos Santos and Carlos Vela, both very young but unexperienced and Guillermo Ochoa has not received the same chances mainly because one day Ochoa complained of Eriksson´s policy to select foreigners to the team just because they have mexican passport and the press here want Eriksson´s head due to bad results and because he is calling up many no-Mexican borned and Ochoa spoke and was severely punished but he is the idol of the most important team in Mëxico, Las Aguilas del América, from México City.

I can tell you that Ochoa is the best goalie México has produced and very soon he will be playing for a big club. It has been mentioned many times as the replacement for van der Sar but Ochoa said that he would go there only when van der Sar retires because he wants to be the number one there or at any club he joins and has some amazing reflexes, he can stop about everything but his only weakness is that he sometimes fails in corners and free kicks but he has improved a lot in that area and although he is young he is not a promise in México…they call San Ochoa because his team depends a lot in him because the defense suck but mark my words…Guillermo will make it big!

By Andrew | February 17th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

Dirk, Mario, Good information. Many thanks. @Finn, nice list. I’d add Preudhomme, Dassaev, and Chilavert (fabulous in France ‘98)

Posted from United States

By finnster01 | February 17th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

@Andrew: Forgot about Preudhomme. Chilavert was good too, especially in 98. Dassaev had his moments but I think he kind of was “overhyped” a bit as the “second coming of Yashin” which of course he never was and probably suffered a bit because of that.

Also speaking of goalies, I find it interesting that world class goalies seem to fall into two categories: 1) Real nice people: EVDS, Peter Chech, Gordon Banks, Sepp Maier, Dino Zoff, Tomaszewski, Casillas, Schmeichel, Taffarel etc. and real thugs/idiots: Schumacher, Kahn, Peter Shilton (a real arrogant idiot by the way), Lehman, Buffon, James etc. Doesn’t seem to be too much in between, which means that you either have to be really at peace with yourself or be a complete bastard to be a great goalie…

By Carlos | February 18th, 2009 at 1:44 am

Anyone remember Pat Jennings ? met him once in Singapore where he played a seniors 7’s tournament against the twin Kerkhofs.Shook his hand, he had MONSTER claws !! Nice humble guy too…anyway can’t judge after a 3 min meeting.Thought he did OK – He was named English PFA player of the year once, don’t know of any goalkeeper since ?

Posted from Singapore

By Jan | February 18th, 2009 at 4:45 am

Jennings was always one of my faves. Didn’t Argentina have a great goalie in the 70s? Fillol? Isn’t Pepe Reyna really good? And Tomaszewski, he was good. But so was/is Dudek, in my book…

And yes, Glenn Loovens. Ex-Feyenoord. I like him. He’ll be on Bert’s shortlist (he is in Nederland B, I believe).

By Lerkot | February 18th, 2009 at 6:00 am

In what way is Buffon a thug/idiot? Except for his name…

He’s kitten-reminding.

By sonneveld | February 18th, 2009 at 7:20 am

Can someone who watches the eredivise give a short report on Van Bronckhorst’s season so far. Is he still a important player for us? Should he still be in our team

By Alex | February 18th, 2009 at 7:22 am

Loovens ssems to get limited playing time with Celtic.
Just figured if you look at clubs of dutchmen, we have more pretty big clubnames than i thought besides the ones in the squad. If you think of players like
Seedorf(AC Milan), Loovens, Vennegoor of H.(Celtic), Maduro(Valencia),
Engelaar(Schalke 04), Drenthe(Real Madrid), Castelen(HSV), Zenden(Olympique Marseille), not to mention “formally” resigned players V.d.Sar(Man. united) and V.Nistelrooij(Real Madrid). And youngsters: Barazite, Vincent V.d.Berg with Arsenal; Vincent Weijl, Jordy Brouwer(Liverpool); Bruma, V.Aanholt(Chelsea), Arsenio Halfhuid(Aston Villa), Emnes(Middlesbrough). Still i doubt if the overall quality in this list is better then with Eredivisie talents.

Posted from Netherlands

By Alex | February 18th, 2009 at 7:29 am

Given that i agreed to give a monthly update about defenders, and Gio acts as a LB in oranje. I’ll share my thoughts about him. In my eyes, he’s still a great leftback in build-up and attack, BUT, and a big BUT to be honoust, I think his defending skills are declining FAST!, seems to be getting worse especially in one-on-one situations every month. I really wouldn’t select him anymore, I’d stick to Bouma and Braafheid for leftback.

Posted from Netherlands

By Jan | February 18th, 2009 at 8:04 am

From what I’ve seen and read: Gio is the most important player at Feyenoord. I’ve seen him in games where the opponents ran past him but that wasn’t so much his wrongdoing, but useless positioning play by his team mates.

By finnster01 | February 18th, 2009 at 9:05 am

@Lerkot: Buffon is a dirty player. He literally did a Schumacher on Newcastles’s young striker Andy Carroll just after he had scored on him in an absolutely meaningless pre-season game a year ago.

He also has had a few clashes in Serie A and has a reputation for excessive use of the old “knee first” trick

The video of the assault on Carroll has been taken off YouTube but here is a link to the story. It was very nasty and totally uncalled for.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport-old/football/2007/07/30/newcastle-2-0-juventus-115875-19541088/

By Mario | February 18th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

Alex:

Gio is like 35 years old. He is a great player but the future is not in him, he should retire from the national team because he will not have anything to do in the World Cup. In Euro 2008 he had brilliant moments even scoring against Italy and he may play some more games under van Marwijk but for the World Cup the left back position will be in Bouma,Braafheid, De Cler, Emmanuelson, or any other outsider.

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