Goalie Styles

I felt like yesterday was Friday, but today is only Thursday. I'm not sure how that works, but I will probably be off for most of the day. Anyway, today let's talk about the power soccer goaltending. From that film I have watched, there are basically two schools of thought when it comes to goaltending -- appropriately modeled by the top two teams in America, the Circle City Rollers and the Atlanta Synergy. First, Circle City played an extraordinarily conservative style in which the goaltender hardly ever leaves the goal. The obvious benefit of this is that the goaltender will hardly ever be out of position, but the disadvantage is exactly why I believe that Atlanta plays such an aggressive style. Atlanta puts the goaltender almost up to half-court a lot of the time with the rationale that the goaltender can cut the ball off before the ball gets too deep into his zone. Obviously, these styles are hardly compatible, but they are both definitely effective. To play the latter style, I feel like the goaltender needs to be probably the best player on the court or if not at least able to stop the best player on the other team. He needs to be able to slow down the ball enough to get support from his teammates.