Should outfield players play in goal?
Football's use of goalkeepers, and perhaps substitutes, is still too conservative. Hear me out ...
When I started this newsletter, I wanted to occasionally write about football more generally, not just Arsenal. So no, this isn’t really an Arsenal one (though Arsenal are referenced) but I think it does still include a really interesting tactical suggestion and something I’ve long thought could be the next step in football. I hope you enjoy it!
As ever, football tends to reflect life. We don’t like change, we are suspicious of innovation. And new ideas are sometimes bad. Sometimes they’re actually neutral, just different, and sometimes they are actually good, they just feel strange because they’re different.
No, I obviously don’t think outfield players should be playing in goal. At least not often, and not for long, and only when you’re desperately chasing a game. Maybe.
I’ve been thinking about goalkeepers being too conservative in possession on and off for years. It was watching Julian Pollersbeck at Christian Titz-coached Hamburg that first sparked thoughts on the role. Titz came in mid-season and Hamburg were struggling. They adopted an approach centred around dominating possession and that included a wildly (uniquely?) aggressive goalkeeper, helping them both kill the opposition press by committing another player to possession and helping them dominate further upfield. Pollersbeck didn’t just play out from the back, he continued upfield and regularly joined in pretty much up to the halfway line.
This was seven years ago and, while goalkeepers joining in with play has become much more normalised and encouraged since then, we still don’t really see anyone play in goal with this sort of aggression in possession now.
There’s an accepted idea nowadays to play with 11 rather than a goalkeeper and 10 outfield players but Titz pushed that to an extreme: Hamburg (like his Magdeburg team now) did not just play with 11 around their own box, but as far as the halfway line.
Compare the volume of touches from Julian Pollersbeck outside the area that season …
… to David Raya in the Premier League season.
Raya is by no means conservative in his approach, he often joins in with the Arsenal defenders, often outside his area, there are countless examples picked out by Billy Carpenter over the last couple of seasons, like this one or this one. This positioning helps Arsenal beat the press and/or push a further player upfield. Sometimes — not often — Raya is up there 30+ yards from his own goal, but maybe it should go even further.
Hot Take
My first question is: Why not have your goalkeeper play further upfield?
On Monday, I opened Instagram and saw clips of SC Paderborn goalkeeper Manuel Riemann, with his side 2-1 down (and down to ten men themselves!) essentially playing outfield in the closing stages against Fortuna Düsseldorf. Here’s his touch map, with Paderborn shooting from left to right, from the 80th minute on:
Yes, that is a shot you can see there.
And yes, the furthest dot forward was a cross into the box in added time.
And yes, that map is from the 80th minute, not just at the very end of the game. Here he is with 83:08 on the clock being closed down after wandering miles into the opposition half.
The context is important here — I’m not advocating for an approach this extreme all the time — Paderborn are chasing promotion, they were a goal down and they knew a defeat would see their opponents leapfrog them in the table.
A couple of years ago, Unai Emery was upset that Emiliano Martinez went up for a corner with Aston Villa trailing 3-2 against Arsenal, and the Gunners making it 4-2 on the break. You may remember Gabriel Martinelli running towards an empty net with his arms in the air. But increasing your chances of making it 3-3 is surely worth increasing the risk of the game ending 4-2? It’s either one point or none.
I want to see goalkeepers taking that chance like Riemann when trailing. And even when they aren’t behind, I want to see more coaches take the Titz approach to including your goalkeeper in possession, beating the press and freeing up another player to join the attack.
Galaxy Brain
Let’s take this even further. My second question: If you’re going to play a goalkeeper that far upfield, why not just use an outfield player?
My mind goes back to Manchester City trying to break down an Arsenal side protecting a lead and offering no threat on the break way back in September. With Arsenal down to 10-men and packing the box with their nine remaining outfield players, most of the ball was with the Manchester City centre-backs.
From the 70th minute onwards, City had 254 touches, with over a third of them taken by Ruben Dias and Manuel Akanji. Dias accounted for four of City’s 15 shots in that spell. Doesn’t that all seem counterproductive? You are desperate for a goal but your least talented players (in an attacking sense) are the ones in space, the ones seeing the majority of the ball?
They had next to no defending to do and I wondered why City didn’t just take off one of those defenders and put Phil Foden or another more attacking talent at the back, instead of bringing Foden and Jack Grealish on for Jeremy Doku and Savinho.
Maybe it sounds extreme. Or maybe, I wonder to myself now, it isn’t extreme enough.
Also on Monday, after closing my Instagram feed and allowing those images from Paderborn-Düsseldorf to sink in, I received a push from BBC Sport. They had a piece by Alex Keble musing potential next developments in football and he suggested outfield players in goal:
Liverpool are 1-0 down against League One opposition in the EFL Cup. There are five minutes left on the clock and all 11 opponents are camped in their third.
Goalkeeper Alisson is now in a quarterback role, sat on the halfway line spraying passes left and right.
So, Arne Slot withdraws Alisson to bring on an extra forward and, with an ironic flourish, gives he-needs-to-get-serious-about-his-defending's Trent Alexander-Arnold the goalie gloves.
This sounds wild and new but is that just because it would be so new to us?
What if I told you it might not even be that revolutionary, with similar tactics already common in similar sports? In ice hockey this is common way of chasing a goal in the closing stages of a game. Here’s an excerpt from an article I found studying the impact:
In hockey, teams pull their goalie in favor of an extra skater when they’re trailing late in a game. This strategy is used almost universally in the NHL: from the 2013-14 season through 2019-20, of all game situations in which one team was trailing within the last two minutes, there was a goalie pull in 98% of those games.
In the comments, the author says …
we can estimate that you’re nearly 3x more likely to tie the game by pulling the goalie.
No-brainer!
It’s not an unusual sight in handball, either. Especially when down a player. Maybe that’s where Paderborn took inspiration from.
There are differences to football of course: handball has rolling subs and sin-bins. So, often, when a player is sent off for two minutes, you’re left playing 5v6. Teams often take the keeper off in these situations to even things up outfield when in possession.
Unlike football, you can quickly sub your goalkeeper back on for the outfield player when possession is overturned. But it’s also a lot easier to score generally in handball and much, much harder to score quickly when regaining the ball in your own box/half in football.
This study on handball lands on a positive (if tentative) position.
In conclusion, we conceive that playing with an additional field player in the critical periods of handball matches could change the momentum of the game
This week will see the second legs of quarter-finals in the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League all take place. We will almost certainly see a goalkeeper or two sent up for a corner across those games.
The likes of Real Madrid and Aston Villa are at home and chasing significant deficits. Yet I don’t think, no matter how late into the game we are or what those deficits looks like, we will see anyone play as aggressively as Riemann did for Paderborn for the final 10+ minutes over the weekend. And the more I think about it, the more I struggle to understand why that’s the case.