We measured more than 70 female and male goalkeepers from 10 years to senior age, from amateur level to national team players.

We started doing this because we were interested in why some very talented and successful goalkeepers cannot perform specific goalkeeping movements well.

We thought there are two possible reasons:

1. They have not learned how the movement is performed
2. The lack of some abilities prevents them from doing so

As we knew that some of the observed goalkeepers performed an infinite number of repetitions of the goalkeeping movement, we concluded that the first reason may be valid for young, still insufficiently educated goalkeepers, but not for seniors at a high competitive level.

In order to find out what the limiting abilities are, we created a battery of tests (initially quite large) and started comparing the results with the goalkeeper’s performance.

With such a wide comparison from seniors to the youngest, we came to a model that shows both direct connections on 70+ tested goalkeepers:

1. Goalkeepers who perform a specific goalkeeping movement well have a high level of a certain set of abilities
2. Goalkeepers who have deficiencies in performing a specific goalkeeping movement have a lower level of one or more abilities from that set of abilities.

Therefore, we concluded that the basis for progress in the performance of goalkeeping technique should not be an additional repetition of the goalkeeping movement, but the development and implementation of a development program of deficient skills that are a prerequisite for good performance of goalkeeping technique.

There is also a direct link between the measured abilities and the decision of whether the goalkeeper will use the “Croatian style” or the “Scandinavian style” of saving.

By entering new data and comparing them with the performance for each age group and gender, we get more precise zones of what we consider:

1. health risk (red)
2. need to develop (yellow)
3. good (green)

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