Contribution to methodology of efficiency evaluation of handball goalkeepers

Abstract

Goalkeepers have a very important role in handball, especially in maintaining team morale. In coaching communities, it is well recognized that goalkeepers’ performances can predict team ranking in major tournaments (Hansen at al.,2017). There are different systems for assessing players, goalkeepers and team’s performance in handball. There is also the need of evaluating the performance of individual players during the game - this evaluation can contribute to a better determination of the tactic’s activities of a team. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyse goalkeepers’ save performance comparing three evaluation methods. The 28 goalkeepers from all 16 national teams of the 2018 men’s European Championships tournament were analysed using three methods (save percentage, saves/time and new method). A significant relationship was not identified between the goalkeepers ranking in these three methods using Friedman ANOVA test (p=0.29).