Goalkeeping: If you’re good enough then you’re big enough

There is a lot of heated debate and fallacy regarding the height of a goalkeeper, and it is the eternal million dollar topic with the goalkeeping community. Height was, is and always will be at the forefront of the scouting checklist when professional clubs are looking for a prospective new custodian.

The truth is simple: if you are good enough then you are almost certainly tall enough.

The majority of arguments for shorter goalkeepers come from shorter goalkeepers themselves. It is easy to accept that the reason you never turned professional is that you simply weren’t tall enough – there’s no shame in that, it’s simply a physical reason that you can quickly justify in your head, and also the reason that you can explain to your grandchildren in years to come “I could have played for Manchester United when I was younger, but I was just too short”

Even though I’m 6’ tall I wholly acknowledge the reason that I did not achieve my dream of playing professional level football was that I was not good enough!!

I could easily write down scores of goalkeeping names that would be considered “shorties” but all that would achieve is to fuel the fire of my argument that height is not everything.

In my book ‘Goalkeeping: Looking After Number One’ I penned a chapter named “How tall is he? Can he kick?” This was related to the first two questions that any goalkeeper scout gets asked when he recommends a goalkeeper to a club. This naturally supports my viewpoint that height is not the be all and end all of playing professional level football.

It is merely a factor in the overall picture.

If there were two 16 year olds vying for a scholarship, both of equal standard, ability and potential but one was 6’2” and the other 5’9” – which one would (rightly) get the nod?

We live in an ‘excuse culture’ whereby things are never that individuals fault – my opinion is that players must look at themselves first and foremost to truly discover the reason why they are playing where they are. If you haven’t been blessed with great stature then what can you add to your game to compensate for that? How hard did you work to overcome this failure?

Ask Peter Shilton for instance, what he did when he readily acknowledged that he may not grow as tall as he’d dreamed?

Personally I have not met one single goalkeeper coach that would support a decision to ditch a hugely talented goalkeeper, just because of his height. We can see the ability and potential in our students, and would not, could not and never would (I hope) use the height line as a genuine reason to wreck the dreams of a young goalkeeper.

Yes, there is a whole host of initial luck used up at getting into a professional club in the first instance, so don’t sit back and relax – you need to make it incredibly hard for that club to drop you! If you’re good enough then you are tall enough!!