A goalkeeper can singlehandedly keep your team alive in the match by making acrobatic saves and latching onto loose balls before they fall to the opposition forwards. Many Football Manager 2023 Managers fail to pay enough attention to this position while coming up with their tactical plans, and come to regret this decision later on. Let’s take a look at the different roles and duties you can assign to your keeper to get the best out of him.
Traditional Goalkeeper
As the name implies, this role ensures that the goalkeeper does just what has historically been expected of goalkeepers: guard the goal. They will not do anything out of the ordinary, like launching counterattacks or playing a significant part in the build up out of defence. Rather, they will sit back in the box, ready for any shot pelted their way to help their team keep the important cleansheet. That being said, they are not completely unfamiliar in the ball-playing department, and thus are capable of playing simple short as well as long passes, however, this will come secondary to their goal-saving objective.
The traditional goalkeeper will stay within the box.
Based on our discussion above, it makes sense that this traditional role only comes with the Defend duty. So if you want to keep things simple, I suggest you go for this role as you will not have to put much thought into changing your team structure for the goalkeeper.
Sweeper Keeper
For the more adventurous Football Manager 2023 managers, the sweeper keeper is the way to go. In addition to the roles performed by the traditional goalkeeper, the sweeper keeper will also look to rush out of the penalty area to latch onto any spare balls in his own half before they fall prey to an opposition counter-attack. This tendency does come with risks however, and a slight misjudgement may lead to an open goal oppurtunity for the opposition strikers.
The sweeper keeper will also play a significant part in the build-up of play by acting as a pivot between the centrebacks, thus allowing an outlet for playing out of the press. In addition, they are capable of playing accurate long balls into the target forwards for launching quick counter-attacks by breaking the lines of defence.
The sweeper keeper will patrol the edge of the penalty box, looking to eliminate any threats from long balls.
I suggest you assign the sweeper keeper role when you are playing a possession oriented game, much like Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona team. This means that your team should have the inclination to press high up the pitch, build up from the back, and the goalkeeper should distribute to the centrebacks. This tactical style should give you a nice flowing gameplay as your team looks to play out of the press starting from the back.
The sweeper keeper has three duties. These include defend, support, and attack. With the defend duty, the focus will be more on the traditional roles of the keeper. This balance changes as you move to support and finally attack, where the goalkeeper will start taking an active part in the buildup and act as the eleventh outfield player.
Conclusion
That about sums up this Football Manager 2023 Goalkeeper Roles guide. Armed with the understanding of the various roles and duties, you should now be able to improve your overall gameplay and rack up wins in whatever mode you prefer.
