Africa lacking early goalkeeping development - Alex Heredia

Heredia, who started out as a goalkeeper coach instructor, but now coaches instructors, also previously served as Bafana Bafana and SuperSport United goalkeeper coach.

The South Africa-based Argentine tells SABC Sport that, in terms of skill, the African continent can match many of the world’s top goalkeepers, but rely on instinct.

"One of the arguments is always around the size of the goalkeeper – if you go to the Northern part of Africa, you will see the people are 1.9m, 1.94m tall, and in the Southern countries the goalkeepers are a little bit shorter," said Heredia.

"But, nevertheless, both have a lot of quality to offer, and the difference with the rest of the world, or many parts of the world, is the basics of the goalkeepers are not impeccable.

"Meaning, we are talking about all of Africa in general, they perform in games basically through instinct, but it's not been taught or coached properly from a very early age.

"And when I say very early age, I'm talking about six, seven, eight years old, which is when they are really starting to develop as goalkeepers."

South Africa haven’t exported many goalkeepers over the years, and Heredia says it is imperative that more goalkeeper coaching courses are held, not only to help stimulate growth from an early age, but to also to have good instructors.

"It's not a miracle or something extravagant, we need to have good teachers to have good students – meaning we haven't got enough goalkeeper coaches to produce better goalkeepers," he added.

"If you see right now what's happening in South Africa, who is the [Bafana] number one? Ronwen Williams, perfect. There's nothing wrong with him, he's been at SuperSport and Sundowns for many years, and he's doing well.

"He's the best goalkeeper on the continent, but he's 31 or 32 [years old], and who is the second one? [Veli] Mothwa. Who is the next one? Ricardo Goss, [Sipho] Chaine. 

"We have goalkeepers who can perform, but we cannot rate them among top goalkeepers around the world – why? Not because they haven't got the quality, but because they are still missing proper coaching from a very early age.

"SAFA need to have more goalkeeping coaches and establish constant workshops to stimulate and create more options for goalkeeper coaches, so that eventually we will have better goalkeepers."

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