THE GOALKEEPER AND THE FOOT GAME SKILLS. A DARWINIST APPROACH

Although the goalkeepers pioneering the foot game skills appeared approximately 60 years ago, this style only began to establish at the highest competitive football level a little over a decade ago, especially with the successful FC Barcelona coached by Pep Guardiola, and his showy and effective style of ball possession.

To serve this style, and that of many other teams afterwards, the goalkeeper must not only use his/her feet for performing goal kicks and receiving backward passes from his pressed teammates, but also as the initiator of the offensive game, keeping the ball to attract the rival and generate numerical superiority, freeing a partner from his rival.

Despite how successful and widespread this game model has become, the debate still persists as to whether it distracts the Goalkeeper from its essential function: to protect the goal. Many defenders of this position tend to point out technical weaknesses for this role in goalkeepers who are better prepared for strategies that require their participation as a field player, even venturing with the ball out of the penalty box.

However, at the highest competitive level there are many successful Goalkeepers fully integrated into the collective game for their footwork skills, while still being sufficiently effective in defending the goal, despite some executions may seem not completely orthodox technically.

I understand that in the modern world, sport must be considered as one of numerous facets of human biology. Thus, without trying to give a definitive opinion, some general principles of biological evolution can provide analogies that allow us to analyze or reflect on sports.

For example, in evolutionary biology it is recognized that one of the major factors that increase a species vulnerability to extinction is over-specialization. That is, when the environment is stable, the species tend to specialize (for example, by becoming giants), but when the environment is variable, the more specialized are more vulnerable to extinction.

It must be kept in mind that in addition to individual talent, the athlete’s specialization implies training time. Thus a goalkeeper specialized just to catch or deflect could show weaknesses in circumstances when the team requires his feet skills. At the same time, a Goalkeeper highly specialized in feet skills could show deficits when defending the goal in extreme situations.

Consider also the “survival of the fittest,” a phrase that has been used to describe the concept of Natural Selection in biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin, which refers to the members of the species best prepared to perform efficiently in their environment. The goalkeeper’s environment includes the field and all the circumstances that occur there. Clearly in today’s football they include situations that require the Goalkeeper much more effective feet skills than decades ago.

If the analogy is appropriate, not training the Goalkeeper to develop appropriate feet skills could constrain his/her future in high competition.