Avangard Guardian Coach Sergei Zviagin in response to criticism Kari Lehtonen addressed the Russian school of goalkeepers said that the situation is changing for the better.
Lehtonen told Iltalehti that the production of quality goalkeepers is now in decline, and this is partly due to the departure from the country of Finnish coaches who appeared in the KHL in the 2010s.
— I think the big advantage of the Russian goalkeepers is that we don’t have some sort of centralized program, like in Finland. We have many goalkeeper coaches in all organizations and they don’t kill individuality. Let’s say that Ilya Sorokin and Andrei Vasilevsky are completely different keepers. And it is precisely because of this that our goalkeepers are now so in demand and successful, they dominate in NHL .
Critique of the Russian School by Finn Lehtonen? I will say this: in the work of improving mutual understanding with defenders, we have great potential. From childhood, the head coach builds a training session for the team, for outfield players and does not think about goalkeepers. Our task is to advise the coach to choose such drills which would also benefit the goalkeepers. It’s not a fact that the head coach will agree to do it, but you have to give your opinion. In professional teams it is very easy to include a goalkeeper in the exercise. Just under Bob Hartley, much of the training was aimed at getting the keeper to communicate with the defence. Perhaps Lehtonen is simply saying that previously all this was not the focus of attention in Russia. But now the situation is changing, both at Avangard and under Hartley, and now goalkeepers are present at all team meetings and participate in discussions about various situations,” Zvyagin told The Championship.
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Championship
Source : MatchTV
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