Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the characteristics of skilled goalkeepers in terms of the information processing process and to make recommendations to the coaching field regarding the risk management ability of goalkeepers. Seven goalkeepers belonging to a university soccer club were asked to detect a free player in a 3-on-3 situation in front of the goal (two conditions: attacking viewpoint and defensive viewpoint). The results of the analysis showed that goalkeepers with higher ratings of risk management by their coaches took shorter time to decide on the goalkeeper’s viewpoint in the free player detection task. On the other hand, no relationship was found between the time to determine the attacking viewpoint and the coach’s evaluation. These results indicate that goalkeepers who excel in risk management are characterized by their superior information processing ability to detect free players in advance, and that they have developed a knowledge base specific to goalkeepers as a background for this ability. These results suggest that it is necessary to consider coaching methods that include an element of information processing in goalkeeping. This study is important in that it provides knowledge that contributes to the development of coaching methods for goalkeeping, which is becoming increasingly important in modern soccer.
