Ten years of "Safehands I the art of goalkeeping" - this occasion had to be celebrated properly. And so, in keeping with the occasion, MGT-Sports did not miss the opportunity to invite some of the best goalkeeping coaches in Germany and Europe to the Vorarlberg Football Academy in Bregenz to present their ideas on the development of goalkeeping or the implementation of specific training content in goalkeeping training. The interest in this event was correspondingly high. 110 participants set a new record for the number of registrations for this annual event. The weather gods were also aware of the importance and quality of this event and sent temperatures of 23 °C, which are rather unusual for this time of year, to the sports facility beautifully situated on Lake Constance.

At the beginning of the goalkeeper seminar on Friday afternoon, German Vision Sports in person of Sven Empen presented their concept. German Sportsvision is a team led by Sven Empen, one of the most experienced German master opticians for sports. Empen pointed out how important it is for every athlete and their coach to know what visual and sensorimotor abilities the athlete possesses. Since 90% of perception is through the visual system, the quality of the eyes plays a crucial role in the rapid acquisition of information for correct decision making. German Sportsvision offers the possibility to measure ten different aspects of the eye with the help of the first Sensory Station in the German-speaking world and to correct or improve possible visual weaknesses in a targeted manner with appropriate exercises in consultation with the athlete and the trainer.

In the subsequent practical part, Simon Panter from the French first division club Racing Strasbourg illustrated in various exercises how the goalkeeper's perception, attention and concentration can be trained with the help of Fitlights and the strobo goggles.

Saturday started with a presentation by Roland Goriupp, head of goalkeeper coach education at the Austrian Football Association. In his presentation entitled "Integration instead of isolation", he pleaded for goalkeeper training to be more integrated into team training. Based on various research results that state that most goalkeeper errors are now only to a small extent to be found in a lack of technique, but rather in the area of wrong decisions, he called for exercises that depict situations close to the game: with opponents, teammates, physical contact, time and space pressure, and unpredictable decisions. Goalkeepers today are well prepared in terms of goalkeeping thanks to far better training, he said, and most sources of error can therefore be minimized above all in tactical interaction with the team.

The next speaker was Claudio Filippi from top European club Juventus Torino. He spoke on the topic of "Physical contacts of the goalkeeper during the match". Based on research results, he showed how many contacts a goalkeeper has on average during the game with opponents and teammates. With video sequences of different game scenes he made clear in which game situations these body contacts of the goalkeeper arise. But how should a goalkeeper be prepared for these physical situations? For this purpose, Claudio Filippi, together with the company MGT Sport, has developed two aids that are helpful for training these situations: The Filippi Shield and the Filippi Push. With the help of the Filippi-Push goalkeepers can get used to contact with players and simulate physical contact. The Filippi-Push has other advantages as well. With its help, the goalkeeper builds confidence in himself to be able to secure the ball despite resistance, because he has repeatedly had this experience in training. In addition, he learns to assess whether the ball will fly over the push or not. Because of the visual disturbance caused by the push, the goalkeeper learns to assess whether to attack, catch, fist the ball, or retreat to the goal line. He also improves his reaction skills because he may have to react to deflected balls. In short, the Filippi push can be used to train many game situations that occur in the game, especially in space defense.
In the practical part that followed, Filippi used exercises to show how the Filippi Push can be used sensibly and in different ways to train various game situations.

In the last lecture of the day, entitled "The five ages of goalkeeping", Hans Leitert, who works for Liverpool FC and UEFA, gave an interesting overview of the development of goalkeeping over the decades. He divided the game of goalkeeping into different phases of development: the Age of Foundation (mid-19th century), the Age of Transition (from 1924), the Age of Legends (ca. 1970 -1990), the Age of Globalization (1990s to 2004) and the Age of Noise, which describes our current era. He showed how equipment, rules, size, training theory and demands on goalkeepers have changed over time. In his concluding section, he intensively addressed the changing expectations and behaviors of society and the media landscape and shed light on the role of coaches in this system. He described their role as "expectation managers". In the direction of coaches, he warned against simply copying trends and advocated "trial and error" as the normal path of development, both for coaches and goalkeepers.

In the final round of questions on the subject of where the goalkeeping game will be in ten years' time, David Thiel (Bayer Leverkusen) and Thomas Schlieck (Borussia Dortmund) were joined by the speakers already mentioned. In addition to questions from the moderator, the group of experts also answered questions from the audience. Possible rule changes, even more offensive positioning of the goalkeeper, the size of the goalkeeper were among the aspects of the Q&A session.

One thing remains to be said when evaluating the day: More expertise, quality and information for interested goalkeeper coaches is probably difficult to offer again than the company MGT-Sports has managed last weekend in Bregenz.