Blog 17: Fourth Interview Questions

1. How do you position yourself to have an optimal angle against an oncoming shooter?
2. When coming towards an attacker (say in a 50/50 scenario) how close do you get to the play?
3. In regards to the last question, when you position yourself do you measure the distance from the ball or the player? Why is that your preference?
4. What do you tell yourself after you made a mistake?
5. I’ve been faced with a potentially career ending injury.  When you’ve suffered an injury bad enough to take you out of the game for an extended period of time, what do you do to keep your mind positive?
6. After coming back from an injury, what do you tell yourself after your first game back?
7. What do you feel is more important, the tactical or technical skills a goalkeeper learns?
8. What type of training do you feel you’ve benefited from the most, watching, teaching, or straight up training?
9. When your training has plateaued, what do you do to get yourself out of the rut?
10. Distribution is an important part of goalkeeping, but there are a few different techniques used by different goalkeepers.  Which do you value more, speed or accuracy?
11. What visual cues do you use to stop penalty kicks?
12. How do you analyze the players you’re going up against?  And with that information, how do you use it to your advantage?
13. When organizing your defense, do you focus more on the front post or the back post?
14. What do you feel is the proper way to set up your defense on a set play where the player is 30 yards out and close to the sideline?
15. How much should a goalkeeper depend on their defense to clear deflections?
16. Can a short goalkeeper with good jump height ever compare to a naturally tall keeper?  Don’t worry, I won’t take offense to your answer either way.
17. Is there something you do before a game that if you were to not do it, you would be taken out of your game?  How important do you think the idea of a pregame ritual is to your mental game?
18. When you realize that something is going wrong with your game, how do you change it?
19. Do the best goalkeeper come from alternate playing positions?
20. What do you see in a keeper’s mentality that is different from a field player’s mind?
21. How can a goalkeeper best avoid having goals scored against them during a soccer game?

Blog 12: Third Interview Questions

1. How can a goalkeeper best avoid having a goal scored against her during a soccer game?

2. What training type do you feel is more successful, technical (technique) or tactical (game scenarios? Why?

3. With that in mind, what training regime is more important, the psychological (being able to get back up after a mistake) or physical training (actual hands on goalkeeping)? Why?

4. What is the best form of training (having a coach tell you what you’re doing), watching (seeing a higher level athlete perform at peak performance), or teaching (giving the goalkeeper the knowledge to show someone what they are doing wrong)?

5. Hope Solo spent a lot of her youth career playing forward, she didn’t become a permanent goalkeeper until she was in college. Do you feel the best keepers come from alternate positioning backgrounds? Why or why not?

6. I’ve always been taught never to go on my knees, and that I will be less likely to have balls go over my head in the case of an unsuspected bounce.  What side do you take in this argument?

7. In the case that a goalkeeper is scored on, what is the best thing to tell them to prevent another goal from being scored?

8. How much of the game (a keeper plays) relies on natural born talent, like height, over talent that’s taught, like diving.

9. In current conditions, coaches don’t put as much time into coaching goalkeepers at a younger age.  How much does this hurt the teams’ chances of having a shutout, and the goalkeepers’ chances of becoming an elite athlete?

10. Do you feel that perhaps more training on the field is what has lead to the game’s current status quo of keepers being more of a “sweeper keeper”?

11. Some say it’s easier to dive, but I feel it both expends more energy and results in more rebounds and turnovers.  Some say footwork is a better option because the same ball the diving keeper had to save would be ran over to, then collapsed on by the keeper with better footwork. Which fundamental skill do you think is more important?

Second Interview Questions

Kim Nemeth is my mentor.  She is self employed as both a swimming coach and a goalkeeping coach. Of course, I will be focusing on the goalkeeping part of her job.

Interview 2 Questions

1. What prior experience have you before you started training keepers?  And how is it currently helping you?
2. What do you love about coaching goalkeepers?
3. What kind of experience do you think is most important to be qualified enough to coach goalkeepers?
4. Have you done anything important, or something that sticks out more than other things since you've started training keepers?
5. What experiences have you gained from training different aged keepers?
6. What originally got you in to training goalkeepers?
7. Has training goalkeepers improved your game as a keeper?
8. Do you believe there is something you do that sets you apart from other goalkeeping coaches?
9. How long have you been a keeper yourself? 
10. Obviously at different levels of soccer the level of competitiveness changes.  Do/Would you change the drills and level of training for a 15 year old club player vs. a college athlete?
11. From a training perspective, how was playing for Cal Poly different from your high school team? Different from the adult league you currently play in?
12. How has the world of goalkeeping changed since you started playing?