FC Dallas GK

Growing Up In The Spotlight

Tough couple plays for Jese Gonzales, FC Dallas' 20-year old GK in MLS playoff action.

First, he gets caught moving to his left on a ball swinging to his right...there's some possibility that he assessed the CB position as being in such a spot that the back post was protected, though we'll see below that he was not.  The audacity of the shot is remarkable, but the young GK was happy-footed and from this sort of range, simply needed to stay central and steady.  Watch the film, then see below about the geometry of the play:




So here's a still of the moment before the strike:

Here's the GK just as the ball leaves the shooter's foot:

And the final positioning:

At the risk of piling on, here's a GIF of the keeper's movement as the shot is taken, just watch his timing and the change his movement makes in the angle to the shooter...like most young GKs I've worked with, he got a little twitchy at a really lousy moment:

The second massive error came on something GK coaches cringe at the sight of every time, a keeper with both knees on the grass:

Once Gonzales is on the knees, he's utterly unable to corral a loose ball.  He's looking to block, as the crowd moves toward him along with the ball...but both knees down is no way to block, and when the ball remains loose, he's stuck in the worst possible position, other than flat on his back.

Really tough to watch a huge young talent get lit up in a game of this magnitude...FC Dallas is cranking out great young players, and hopefully they have a plan for when a youngster has to bounce back from this sort of performance.  It's as inevitable as the sun rising each day that a young player will get fouled up, and making sure that Gonzales can shake it off and remain confident in his abilities and potential will be the most important job FCD has in the next week, defensively.