Whose responsibility is it to provide goal keeper specific training? Club or parent?

We have a parent of one of our goal keepers, (girls U14) who seems to think that we as the team or club, should be finding and funding, extra goal keeper training above what we do in our standard training sessions.

If our goal keeper wants to develop further, and have goal keeper specific training, we fully support that. We are limited in what we ourselves as a coaching team, can teach her in our standard team training sessions, by time and knowledge. We have one hour a week to train a team of 18 players.

We have shared details of local goal keeping training that we are aware of, but the parent has insinuated that if we don’t pay for it she won’t be able to do it.

Is it usual practice for a club to provide goalkeeper specific training sessions? I’m aware of local clubs who arrange these sessions, but it is still the responsibility of the parents to pay for it.

I would be concerned that if we started funding extra training for our goalkeeper, we would have questions from other players and parents asking why we are not funding their extra 1-to-1 sessions that they themselves have sought out and pay for.

I would appreciate your thoughts and experiences with this topic please.

Thank you.

Parents
  • Hi Nicola, I have been around community grassroots club for 25 years and in my experience the club pays, in fact they do everything they can to attract and improve GKs in all their teams. It doesn't have to be one 2 one, there are loads of GK coaches out their attending club sessions and taking all the 5  aside keepers in one session, the (9 asides in another and 11 asides in another. Bringing the GKs together to support each other usually means the GKs stay, get better and attract better outfield players. Most decent clubs I am aware of rotate and the gKs get a session every few weeks and join the main team sessions before and after. Hope this helps with options

Reply
  • Hi Nicola, I have been around community grassroots club for 25 years and in my experience the club pays, in fact they do everything they can to attract and improve GKs in all their teams. It doesn't have to be one 2 one, there are loads of GK coaches out their attending club sessions and taking all the 5  aside keepers in one session, the (9 asides in another and 11 asides in another. Bringing the GKs together to support each other usually means the GKs stay, get better and attract better outfield players. Most decent clubs I am aware of rotate and the gKs get a session every few weeks and join the main team sessions before and after. Hope this helps with options

Children