To have a goalkeeper confident with his feet when you have to play against high pressure teams is extremely important and a big advantage to your defense. 

Keeping possession has become the way to play football. Long ball football or Hollywood ball football, as otherwise known,  has become extremely unpopular and broadly unsuccessful. Every side wants to have possession of the ball for the majority of the game, and a key way to impose this on a side is by getting the goalkeeper to play short. Barcelona’s Victor Valdes is a master of it.


This is why improving footwork and agility in a goalkeeper has become as essential as having a GREAT touch with one's hands.

Watch Below How Victor Valdes' footwork skills help the team play from the back and develop play without giving up possession. 

Swansea actually bought Michel Vorm to play in goal because he is so comfortable with the ball at his feet. ”For us it was then the case of looking to get in the right type of goalkeeper,” said Rodgers. “We needed one that was going to suit our style and Michel was one that was on our list. After looking at his style and his game I think his attributes suit us perfectly. He makes saves, which is important for a keeper. But for how we play, we like to build the game from behind, it is vital that the goalkeeper is comfortable with his feet…he is a player that not only does that but he controls the game well from behind and will help us construct the game from the back. He is very quick and very agile so he is similar to Victor Valdes at Barcelona.” 

Keeping the ball equals good defending 

It starts with the keeper's footwork

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Keep possession by starting from the back 

Michael Vorm has the fourth-highest pass completion rate of any goalkeeper in the English Premier League. Swansea has the fourth-highest average percentage in the league. Is it coincidence? Probably not. Below is a graph, showing the correlation between a goalkeeper’s pass completion ratio, and a team’s average possession, from the English Premier League games so far this season. 
(Stats throughout this piece from WhoScored.com)

If you take a closer look at the graph there’s quite a clear pattern there. Chelsea has the highest average percentage, and the best pass completion ratio. Looking at the graph more broadly, all of the sides that average more than 50% of possession (to the right of the vertical line) have a goalkeeper with a 50% or greater pass completion ratio.

However if you take a look at the left of the line, when there’s less of a clear pattern you will notice a problem. This shows the limitations of a pass completion rate, because the dot top-left is Stoke. They have a high pass completion rate because Peter Crouch wins all the long balls, not because they pass the ball carefully from the back. (Incidentally, the bottom-left dot is Blackburn, who don’t have a Crouch figure but still have a goalkeeper in Paul Robinson who hits the ball long. He has the worst pass completion rate of any player in Europe’s major five leagues.)

Therefore, a more accurate measure of passing is the proportion of a goalkeeper’s distribution that is short to a teammate rather than hoofed down field, a figure recorded by Opta, expressed here in percentage terms.

That brings Stoke more in line with the rest of the sides, and the correlation higher up the line is interesting too.

The two anomalies here, incidentally, are Everton (more than 40% of goalkeeper distribution short, but a low possession count) and QPR (the highest percentage of long balls from their goalkeeper, but nearly 50% possession).

None of this proves anything, or suggests much you wouldn’t expect, and we have to be careful in cause-effect terms. But if keeping the ball equals good defending, and if playing the first pass short to a teammate is linked to high possession, then goalkeepers and defenses shouldn’t be too worried by the odd dreadful concession of a goal – in the long-term, they’ll benefit from their bravery.