Kelleher or Bazunu? Analysing Ireland's goalkeeper conundrum

Gavin Cooney THE HARDEST JOB in football, David Forde tells me, is that of the substitute goalkeeper.

“You live in a kind of hopeful defiance, or hopeful anticipation: you’re always living in the future; in the imagination. The misuse of that imagination can lead to a lot of anxiety.”“It’s great if you’re a fan”, he says, “but I wouldn’t like to be John O’Shea, picking them.”Caoimhin Kelleher and Gavin Bazunu. Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHOBoth are evidently fantastic goalkeepers who have weathered intermittent squalls to prove they are comfortable at the highest level.

Where Bazunu plays every week at a high level under big pressure, Kelleher plays sporadically at the very highest level under enormous pressure. Where Bazunu has more to do, Kelleher has less room for error. “The first thing that struck me about him was, ‘This is a serious, serious guy’”, Preece tells me when I ask him for his first impression of Bazunu. “Somebody so young but he was so intense, in a controlled way. He was ambitious, he questioned everything, he was so inquisitive.

“The patience and tolerance he has shown, I take my hat off to him,” says Forde. “Alisson is probably the world’s best goalkeeper, so for him to go in there and smash it out of the park is phenomenal.” He is performing at such a high level, it is commendable.” Preece explains that training cannot recreate what are specific game-type situations, which include set pieces but also tuning a ‘keeper’s depth perception of through balls and crosses. This has been an occasional issue for Kelleher in an Ireland jersey, most obviously in conceding the only goal of the 1-0 loss at home to Ukraine in June 2022.

This, Preece says, is the most important phase, and one in which the goalkeeper wants to be in their final position, and so be still and motionless, so as to give themselves the best chance to make the save. Preece says Bazunu is occasionally caught moving too much – that his preparatory phase bleeds into his approaching phase – and therefore isn’t fully ready to make the save. Perhaps this is partly why a disproportionate number of the goals Ireland conceded last year came from long range.

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