The whole pitch spreads out before you, and you see the moment the tide changes — a breakaway, a quick-footed midfielder speeding down the wing, a perfectly-placed cross to the feet of a waiting striker. Which way is the shot going? How fast is it coming? You anticipate, you move, you dive. It’s yours. The game is safe for now.

Imagine that kind of pressure, the kind of athleticism demanded, the kind of instinct. Goalkeepers are an integral part of the game, but sometimes it seems they aren’t playing quite the same sport as the other 10 guys on their side of the pitch. Being the last man standing between the ball and the net requires a specialized skill set honed in highly individualized training. But what does that training look like? With Loons’ fans ready to see some additional keeper action during June’s international window as league-leader in clean sheets Dayne St. Clair mans the net for Canada, now seems an appropriate time to take a deep dive (pun intended) into what exactly makes a goalie a goalie.

To get a glimpse into what life looks like on a daily basis for this squad of specialized pros, we sat down with MNUFC Head of Goalkeeping Thomas Fawdry and MNUFC2 Goalkeeper Coach Cristiano Costa. Fawdry found his way to coaching at only 20, studying at Southampton and accumulating over five years of first team experience leading goalkeeping departments before landing with the Loons just last season. Most recently, he served as Director of Goalkeeping at EFL League One side Barnsley FC. Costa has been in various coaching roles since 2011, notably having served as Director of Goalkeeping for four clubs in the Chicagoland area and stepping in as Interim Head of Goalkeeping for MNUFC in 2024. Here’s what they have to say about manning the net and all the strategy and training — physical and mental — that goes into it.

The GK Union

There’s only one keeper in the starting XI, who’s generally expected to play the full 90, and that type of selectivity means pretty intense competition. That stretches across all levels of the club.

When drills split the team into more than two groups, four players in red will often occupy the nets. But wait, that’s two more than the roster says! Yep — Wessel Speel and Kayne Rizvanovich, second-team goalkeepers, split their time between first- and second-team training depending on their own needs and the requirements of the larger group. It’s another kind of balance that also serves to prepare second-team keepers for potential MLS play or appearances in other tournaments, like Speel’s showings in the U.S. Open Cup.

MNUFC’s program is designed with this fluidity in mind, giving second-team and Academy players opportunities to train up a level. First-teamers who might not see as many minutes in regular MLS season play can keep their skills sharp with the Twos. Though a team only has one keeper on the pitch, it’s far from a solitary sport, and the cadre of goalies across the club continuously sharpen one another in a collective effort to reach the highest level of play.

“We like to have a collective group of goalkeepers that are challenging each other, to support them but also create an element of competition as well,” Fawdry said. The effect is an environment of healthy competition, three or more players vying for the same starting position but pushing each other to be better every day. The players call it the Goalkeeper Union. In addition to the players on the pitch, the club has four goalkeeper coaches who collaborate to maintain and develop this ecosystem of healthy competition for their keepers.

Physicality

For all four goalkeeping coaches — Fawdry, Costa, and Academy coaches Jonathan Barber and Lucca Shimanuki — training is holistic: competitive, technical, tactical, physical, and psychological, all together. If you’ve been to a match, you’ve probably seen the goalies warming up before the rest of the team, catching shots and diving this way and that. That type of physical reflex training is foundational, and keepers also have a separate, individualized gym program developed by coaching and performance staff.

The physical components in gym training are centered around mobility, flexibility, strength, and explosive power: skills that are paramount in the keeper position. The rest comes out naturally on the field.

“Rather than isolating the physical movement, the physical movement will be a byproduct of their movement or action or save or how they deal with the cross,” Fawdry said. Instead of drilling repetitive, choreographed movements, training involves real-time reactions that better simulate gameday situations.

Training on the field always looks a bit different, too. “We’re gonna prepare them differently because they perform the game in a different way,” Costa said. Goalies sprint less, and when they do sprint, they have less ground to cover. They’re jumping all the time, diving, reacting in the blink of an eye. It’s a different physical skill set than a striker or a center back. Their touches need to be explosive for ball distribution, and their guard needs to be up for the full 90.

Every training session starts with some kind of game or competition, but the drills are as varied as possible, and Costa also emphasizes conceptual training that simulates game-time situations as best as possible.

“We try to create scenarios they’re most likely going to see in games, and talk about ideas of how they can solve the problems,” Costa said. He also prepares goalkeeper training sessions based on the plan for team training. If the team is running drills that involve a lot of crosses and shots, that’s what the keeper session before training will focus on — reaction time, diving, anticipation. “So then when they get there, they dial in and they’re ready to go.”

The brain needs to be trained as rigorously as the rest of the body, a subtler type of physicality that is just as important. St. Clair recently spoke on cognitive training in an episode of Sound of the Loons. He’s dedicated a room in his house to working on functional patterns and eye tracking, among other things — cool home office, right?

Mindset

Professional soccer inherently comes with a lot of pressure, but for keepers, one slip-up can cost their team the game. When so many players are competing for the same starting spot, there’s an added layer of pressure, and then there’s the inherent leadership that comes with manning the net. Even without seniority or captaincy, a keeper constantly has to step up to lead, directing traffic in the box or communicating to the backline. It requires a level of confidence in your own ability to read the field and the movements and abilities of your teammates.

“If it’s a set-piece situation, then Dayne takes a lot of responsibility in terms of organization and knowing the structures, knowing where players need to be,” Fawdry said. “It’s good to have those leaders on the field, and then Dayne takes a key role in that as well.”

Costa and the others are also focused on developing keepers in the long-term, teaching them to dissolve the pressure and approach every game as an opportunity. Before every match, Costa tells his goalies that the nerves are normal, even healthy. But they need to be channeled into attentive energy on the pitch.

“Dayne is in a good flow and run of games at the moment, so he’s consistently being in the moment and experiencing those game situations,” Fawdry said. “Whereas, with our other goalkeepers that are not always playing … they have to stay ready and be psychologically prepared to be able to step in.”

As St. Clair logs wins for the Canadian national team and MNUFC2’s Rizvanovich plays with the U18 USMNT, Alec Smir and Speel occupy that always-ready place. When you see one of them in the net against San Diego, remember: They’re under pressure, but they’re built for it.

Balance

Goalkeeping is all about balance. Not just physically (though that’s important too). The kind of balance key to goalkeeper training is between solo and team, instinct and strategy, detail and big picture. It’s a fine line to walk between the inherent individualism of a goalkeeper and the importance of collaboration, but Fawdry has found a philosophy that continually works both sides of the coin.

“It’s about maximizing what we do in a goalkeeping space and then again maximizing the point where they integrate with the team,” he said. Keepers start training before the rest of the team in order to spend sufficient time on specialized elements — the minute details, the physical work of diving and catching and anticipating — and then join the rest of the team to work on the bigger picture.

That bigger picture is a mental game of sorts, one that every keeper has to balance with the physicality required of the position. Having a viewpoint of the whole field from the net means a keeper has to have an eye on the flow of the game at all times to keep a pulse on potential breakaways or transitions. Not only does he have to predict the movements of the opposition, but he has to be dialed into his own teammates’ playstyles as well. Following the game at that level while staying on your toes for 90 minutes? Multitasking extraordinaires.

Gameday or not, the Goalkeeper Union impacts everyone on the pitch. They’re working in tandem day in and day out to prepare the rest of the squad and keep the clean sheets coming, regardless of who stands in the net. Next time you find yourself cheering from behind the goal, give a little extra shout for your guy in the gloves and all the guys who help prepare him. They’re firing on all cylinders, all the time.