The year 2018 is the begining of my first season as a Player/Manager of the promoted Division 2 champions Park View FC to the 1st Division of the South Midlands Football League D1.

It’s been a very humbling experience as I’ve managed to find myself in a very well structured and ambitious club, bearing in mind that this is my first job as a goalkeeping coach. I’m also grateful for the Chairman/Manager Eric Fraikue for giving me the opportunity to work with the club, knowing that I was inexperienced. Having said that, it’s been great fun working with the club goalkeepers Luis Silva, who was a Professional in the Portuguese second division league and Samuel Owusu, who is a young aspiring scholar from Italy. I must say I am privileged to work with them.

So far as the season has been for Park View FC, it’s been a mix of ups and downs as we come to terms the complexity and competitiveness of the division. At the beginning of the season we had a run of bad results, leaking too many goals and all was compounded by the fact that we were short of our first team players due to injuries and personal commitments. Now we’ve gathered the team together and we had a very good run of results. As for the goalkeepers performances, it’s been somewhat satisfactory in a sence that a lot of work needs to be done and it’s my responsibility to improve on some aspects of goalkeeping that are clearly lacking. My biggest concern is our communication skills which is fundamentally one of the objectives of establishing a solid defence. This also builds the character and confidence of the goalkeeper, and the defensive line responds accordingly to such trait. Our number 1 goalkeeper Luis Silva is from Portugal, a great goalkeeper with a good distribution game and agility compared to non. He is Portuguese, and has an average understanding of the English language. Because hes fluency in speaking English is limited, this becomes quite a problem when it comes to communicating with his defenders and other teammates. In crucial moments in games that communication is required, he goes silent hoping that the defence or the other players would work out the imminent dangers. A major percentage of the time the tactics fail, leading to some ridiculous goals conceded. Sometimes some of the goals cost the team the game, which would have been won. This is the challenge I face as a coach and I’ve been working on it, by suggesting short and effective commands for Luis to remember a deploy at various stages and times of the game. As the saying goes timing is everything – once one mistimes a move then all the anticipated work is compromised.

Next week I will be reporting on the results of our games and going indept on the goalkeepers performances and the effect or influence it had on the game.

You Are The Ultimate Keeper Of Your Destiny.. ULTIMATE KEEPER