What was once a dream is now a reality. Manolo Gaspar, the Club’s sporting director, promotes the creation of a department in which “we believe we’ll grow in terms of work and methodology. It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Now the possibility of Toni Mengual at the helm has arisen, within whom we have a great deal of confidence for this project, focused on all categories from the first team to the young kids,” said Manolo to MCFTV.
Toni Mengual, the new goalkeeper coach for the first team, highlights that “the main objective is to help our goalkeepers reach their full potential and develop at every stage.” Specific training within the youth ranks that will lead to the first team, that will be divided into three stages: “Initiation, training or development and perfection,” said Toni, who is convinced of “creating a joint methodology and club philosophy.”
Manolo stresses the need to ensure that goalkeepers from a young age acquire knowledge based on personalised training in all aspects. “And, of course, that goalkeepers who perform well reach the first team, for many years.” The Blue and White sporting director considers that “over time we’ll have grown in teaching such a complicated role as that of a goalkeeper. It’s a crucial step that will reap rewards.”
Mengual will combine his role within Guede's coaching team with “a great project in which you can create cohesion from the first team to the last. As well as covering all the demands of the role, whether they be technical, tactical, physical and mental, which is fundamental for the keeper.”
The basic idea is to create our own goalkeeping model in which any goalkeeper at the Club knows “what our defensive and offensive strategic plan is,” in Mengual's words, where “goalkeepers will have a unified idea of how we are going to work,” he added.
The professionalism of such a specific position will require “having control, monitoring and evaluation of our keepers. We’re going to implement video analysis in the categories closest to professional football, and will make up reports and actions that are going to help them grow as goalkeepers and as people,” said Toni Mengual, who is delighted to be back at Málaga CF.
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