A goalkeeping revolution is happening at Barcelona with Marc-Andre ter Stegen

Barca keeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, rather than taking the deadball himself, handed it over to Samuel Umtiti, on the edge of the six-yard box, so the French defender could take the kick. Getafe’s players, understandably, were confused. They had never seen this before, and Jorge Molina delayed the restart by encroaching into the area before Umtiti had taken the kick.

When everyone was set, Umtiti simply rolled the ball a couple of yards square to ter Stegen, and then – along with Gerard Pique to the goalkeeper’s right – advanced outside the penalty area, giving the ball-playing keeper passing options.

This new tactic – a defender taking goalkicks to the goalkeeper so he can then advance with the ball at his feet to launch a phase of possession – heralded a remarkably influential performance from ter Stegen, who incredibly ended up with more touches of the ball and more passes than Lionel Messi.

And his highly active role in the action could serve as a template for a new era of goalkeepers, who are now becoming much, much more than simply shot-stoppers and gatherers of crosses. In a very meaningful sense, keepers like ter Stegen are their team’s most important attacking catalysts. A quarterback inside the penalty area. A playmaker from deep. A creative weapon.

Let their feet do some talking

A safe pair of hands? For goalkeepers these days, it’s more important to have a trusty pair of feet.

The new era of goalkeeping began in 1992, when FIFA introduced a new law prohibiting goalkeepers from picking up deliberate back passes played by the feet.

Until then – and now, a few decades into the future, it’s strangely disconcerting to watch footage of old games and see this happen – a key element of defensive play was relieving pressure by passing the ball back to the keeper, who would gather it in his arms and invariably wait for everyone to regain their positions before giving the ball a big lump downfield.

The law was changed because it was deemed to be too easy for defenders to clear their lines with a nudge back to the keeper. Surrounded by opponents on the edge of your area? Dealing with a dangerous low cross with men at your back? Sprinting back towards goal alongside a speedy winger? No problem…just knock the ball back to the keeper, he’ll pick it up and the danger will be safely averted.

The balance between defenders and attackers was judged to be too heavily weighted in favour of the former, with aggressive pressing of the ball in the opposition half almost rendered meaningless by the simple option of returning the ball to the keeper. It was also a tedious time wasting tactic, with defenders simply turning to their keeper and giving the ball back so he could waste a few seconds before sending it back into play – a particularly tiresome sight at the 1990 World Cup and 1992 European Championships.

And so the law change was introduced, removing the safety valve of a lazy backpass and encouraging forwards to pile pressure on defenders inside the final third.

With the benefit of three decades of hindsight, we should hail this decision as one of the most positive law changes the game has ever seen. Football has changed beyond recognition as a consequence, becoming a far more free-flowing sport as the inability to pick up back passes opened up a whole world of ball-playing possibilities, with goalkeepers becoming also footballers who have to be comfortable controlling and passing a ball rather than just picking it up and wellying it downfield.

At first, most teams preferred to play it safe and avoid back passes altogether. Rather than taking the risk of giving the ball to the keeper and testing his ball-playing abilities in a highly dangerous part of the pitch, the more sensible option was to knock the ball out for a throw in or send it long downfield.

Soon, though, it became obvious that surrendering possession so easily was a wastefully negative tactic, and a new generation of keepers who were technically capable of receiving a ball to their feet and actually using it constructively started to emerge.

One of the first modern ‘sweeper-keepers’, prepared to receive and distribute the ball accurately as well as simply defending his own goal, was Gianluca Pagliuca of Sampdoria, Inter Milan and Italy. Many others followed in his footsteps, with the technical abilities of goalkeepers steadily improving through the likes of Fabien Barthez, Edwin van der Sar and Manuel Neuer to the point where all goalkeepers are now expected to have a certain level of proficiency with their feet.

And, as he demonstrated on Saturday, the latest law change is encouraging the art to reach new heights through Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

Changing the game

When your entire philosophy of football is based on retaining possession, it is only logical to include your goalkeeper in that process. Why make so much effort to keep the ball if the man at the base of the team can’t do it?

Having 10 players intent on dominating possession and one incapable of doing so would be pretty contradictory, and it’s therefore perfectly predictable that FC Barcelona, the club most closely identified with hogging the ball, became the leading pioneers in the new era of goalkeeping.

First there was Victor Valdes, then Claudio Bravo (who was subsequently taken to England as Pep Guardiola implemented the new thinking at Manchester City, to be copied before long by virtually ever other Premier League team), and then, in its most extreme form yet, along came ter Stegen.

The German was recruited from Borussia Monchengladbach precisely because of his ability to play out from the back, and his presence as first choice starter from the summer of 2016 onwards (he had previously been Bravo’s understudy and the team’s cup keeper) immediately saw Barca implement ‘playing out from the back’ methods in their most radical form yet.

There were some shaky moments at first, with ter Stegen committing errors with sufficient frequency to make many wonder whether Barca were just taking things too far. After his howling error led to a goal for Celta Vigo in October 2016, for example, legendary Spanish TV commentator Michael Robinson sneered: “The problem is that he thinks he’s Garrincha. He isn’t half as good as he thinks.”

But ter Stegen and then-Barca boss Luis Enrique would not waver. The occasional mistake leading to the occasional goal was more than compensated by the far more frequent attacks sparked by ter Stegen’s icy insistence on receiving the ball under pressure and looking for a constructive pass rather than an aimless whack.

Even during the reign of Ernesto Valverde – hardly the most obsession-oriented manager – ter Stegen’s distribution skills stood out. He registered two assists in the opening 15 games of this season, delivering pinpoint a through ball for Luis Suarez to run on and open the scoring at Getafe in September before doing the same for Antoine Griezmann at home to Mallorca a few weeks later.

But now, with the arrival of Cruyffista (actually Michelsista, as we explained in an earlier article) par excellence Quique Setien, it appears that ter Stegen is set to revolutionise the goalkeeper position even further.

Prominent role

Saturday’s meeting was an appropriate setting to launch the new phase of ter Stegen’s influence, as the game pitted Setien’s possession obsession against Getafe boss Jose Bordalas’s mania for efficient use of space.

From the outset, it became clear that ter Stegen would play an unusually prominent role in the proceedings: with Getafe swarming high up the pitch to push Barca as far away from their goal as possible, he converted his first pass after just 16 seconds, sliding a ball through to Arthur in midfield, and made another accurate delivery to Griezmann 14 seconds later.

The identity of the recipients of those opening passes is significant. Ter Stegen wasn’t simply offloading the ball short to Umtiti or Pique and letting them play out from the back; Getafe’s high press and man-marking often made that impossible, so the keeper had to seek out other options beyond the first wave of pressure.

He continued to do so repeatedly, throughout the match, with Barca forced to show nerveless patience in the face of Getafe’s admirably sustained pressure. “We’re not going to give you simple passes up the field, so you’ll have to play it long,” was the daring challenge laid down by the visiting team. “We’re not going to play it long, so we’ll go back to the keeper and bide our time,” came the response from the hosts.

It was a fascinating game of cat and mouse, with both teams doggedly maintaining their philosophies and attempting to impose their style of play upon the opponent. And for Barca, a central feature – perhaps even the central feature – of that approach was the repeated willingness, when no other passing options were available, to give the ball back to ter Stegen and start again.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Barca were attempting to be conservative or negative. They just wanted to keep the ball, and if that meant going backward in order to then go forward, so be it. A back pass to the keeper, in Barca’s minds, is not a defensive move. It is an attacking move because it retains possession, and ter Stegen can be trusted, whenever they are available, to spot and execute constructive passes which could break Getafe’s pressure and find the space to launch an attack.

This rigid thinking bore fruit shortly before half-time. Just after Antoine Griezmann had opened the scoring, Barca had possession in their own half and, under pressure, returned the ball to ter Stegen. He promptly floated a difficult but perfectly placed pass over the head of an opponent and into the stride of Sergi Roberto, who was running into space down the right flank. Less than a minute later, with Getafe having made a couple of challenges without gaining possession or fully breaking Barca’s rhythm, the ball was in the back of the net as Sergi Roberto swept home Junior Firpo’s cross.

The move finished in one penalty area, but it had started in the other, with ter Stegen.

All in the numbers

Ter Stegen’s stats from Saturday’s game are striking. He made 69 passes, far more than Messi’s 48 and exactly the same as Getafe’s four starting midfielders combined (Marc Cucurella 23, Mauro Arambarri 20, Nemanja Maksimovic 14 and Peter Etebo 12).

And although many of those passes were safe and short to Pique or Umtiti, many were far more risky and adventurous, such as his loft out to Sergi Roberto to spark the move for the second goal.

This is an incredible amount of responsibility to place upon a goalkeeper, and an indication of just how far the position has come since the old days of making saves, catching balls and kicking long. Of course, they remain requirements of the job as well, and ter Stegen does them very well as he demonstrated with a tremendous reflex save and follow-up scoop off the line to deny Angel Rodriguez a late equaliser.

And in the same way that 1992’s change to the backpass rule forced the hand (pardon the pun) of goalkeepers to adapt and thrive under new playing conditions, this season’s law change, allowing defenders into the penalty area before goalkicks are taken, will do the same.

Barca’s innovation of central defenders getting the ball back into play for goalkeepers like ter Stegen to then direct the next forward movement will surely be copied. Pep Guardiola will have noticed it, so don’t be surprised to see Ederson doing the same thing before long. Alisson at Liverpool, perhaps too. And, of course, ter Stegen’s national team rival Manuel Neuer will not want to be outshone.

And for ter Stegen, of course, this is just the beginning. Setien’s insistence upon keeping the ball will inevitably place him at the forefront of his team’s possession play, and the innovative scenes witnessed at the Camp Nou on Saturday will be repeated whenever circumstances dictate.

Is ter Stegen the best goalkeeper in the world? That depends on your definition of ‘the best’. He’s probably not quite the best shot-stopper (Jan Oblak), doesn’t command his box as well as some (Thibaut Courtois) and makes more mistakes than others (Alisson).

But in terms of which goalkeeper has the most responsibility for their team’s overall performance, the Barca keeper is hard to beat. And at the same time, he could ultimately prove responsible for taking the goalkeeper position to its next level of expectations.