Alex Connor

Goalkeeper.com • 19th February 2025

Dean Thornton: Ramsdale, Russell Martin, Reflection, & More

Dean Thornton has worked across the football pyramid as a goalkeeper coach, previously at Queens Park Rangers, Milton Keynes Dons, Swindon Town and Swansea City, and currently at Southampton. “17 years later and I’m still coaching,” he says, speaking exclusively to Goalkeeper.com. “I started this journey so young. I made the right decision to go down this route.”

Thornton’s fantastic coaching journey stemmed from a lower profile playing career. As a young...

Goalkeeper.com • 14th February 2025

Darryl Flahavan: From Facing Ronaldo To Beating Slot's Reds

Since he first laid eyes on a football, Darryl Flahavan has been surrounded by various waves of goalkeeping brilliance that have shaped a tremendous playing and coaching career. His older brother Aaron was a professional goalkeeper at Portsmouth and paved the way for Darryl’s introduction to football. “When I was nine, I watched my brother at the Portsmouth Academy and School of Excellence,” he says, speaking exclusively to Goalkeeper.com.

“I would stand on the side of the pitch, catching balls...

Goalkeeper.com • 18th January 2025

Andy Quy: Coaching Raya, MLS Franchises, & Promotion Hopes

Andy Quy’s coaching career has shifted him across the Football League in England and offered him the opportunity to flourish in America. But, wherever he has worked, there has been an unwavering common denominator in his mentality. “I love developing players and winning games,” he says, speaking to Goalkeeper.com. “It’s all about the project of the job and the club.”

Quy’s playing days started as a schoolboy on a Youth Training Scheme at Tottenham Hotspur. He then secured a pro contract at Derb...

Goalkeeper.com • 9th December 2024

James Hollman: Creator Of ProDeflect, Coaching In The Championship And Premier League

James Hollman’s coaching philosophy is based on collaboration and a thirst for knowledge. “You’ve got to be flexible in terms of relationships and how you teach,” he says, speaking to Goalkeeper.com. “Integration with the team is crucial.”

Hollman’s receptiveness, adaptability, and professionalism have laid the foundations for a distinguished coaching career that has spanned over 20 years and still has significant mileage. It has shifted the 46-year-old across the football pyramid and he’s made...

Goalkeeper.com • 28th November 2024

How Neuro-Fitness Technology Could Help Goalkeepers

Train Your Brain. Transform Your Game. The rhetoric splashed across i-BrainTech, a neuro-fitness data company that looks towards a future where brain training is placed upon the same transformative pedestal as physical exercise.

How do they aim to achieve this? i-Brain says it has created a “new era of training” in the form of a video game, controlled by the innate power of the mind and visualisation. This ground-breaking neuro-training game enhances footballers’ performance on the pitch, aids...

Breaking The Lines • 1st October 2023

Jude Bellingham’s Ascension into Real Madrid’s Kingdom

The world is at his feet. Jude Bellingham is just 20 years old and has already amassed over 180 senior appearances, establishing himself as one of the globe’s most mesmeric and daunting talents. Bellingham’s journey began at his boyhood club Birmingham City, but it was at Borussia Dortmund where his development skyrocketed at an incomprehensible level. A tremendous three seasons with Die Schwarzgelben earned the Englishman an £88.5m move to Real Madrid earlier this summer.

In his short time on

Football Paradise • 23rd May 2023

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia: Naples’ Immortalised Son

Napoli’s first Serie A title in over three decades was won in spectacular fashion, with the Partenopei dominating rivals all over the pitch. One player, the Georgian Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, has managed to grab headlines for his dazzling attacking contributions. He looks at home on a football pitch, writes Alex Connor, blissfully playing the game at his pace.

Depart at the Napoli Piazza Cavour station, and make your way down the Via Foria, which merges onto the Corso Amedeo di Savoia to the Via T

Football Paradise • 2nd December 2022

Five iconic matches from the 2006 World Cup

The World Cup generates an entirely different feeling to club football. All the animosity that fuels and creates the excitement of the domestic leagues is forgotten for a month of national unity. Hailed as the pinnacle of a career, and due to its rarity, the international competition is placed in a dimension of untouchability for most players. The daring dream of bringing 30,875 carats of gold back to your homeland. This is what the World Cup offers.

The 2006 World Cup tournament held in German

Football Bloody Hell • 13th January 2023

Didier Drogba: the inevitable marksman and political messiah

A striker who had an intense and unbridled love for his homeland. After spending the majority of his youth in Europe, Didier Drogba had a passport for both France and Ivory Coast, but described the idea of playing for his birth country as an “undeniable pull.” So when his nation was on its knees, he conjured up an eloquent and powerful message of change, and most importantly, peace, that poetically resonated with Ivorian society.

October 2005. Ivory Coast had just dispatched Sudan with a comfor

Breaking The Lines • 12th December 2022

Jamal Musiala: The Naturally Gifted Phenomenon

Steffen Tepel is a former junior combined skier World Champion, who now specialises as a neuro-athletics coach. He believes football is heavily dependent upon your visual and cognitive skills, and mentors many elite footballers to help with their agility, peripheral vision and decision-making.

Tepel explained to SPOX how players should dribble without fixation upon the ball and focus upon a point in the distance. “Whoever masters the ball without constantly looking at it automatically has a hig

Football Bloody Hell • 3rd March 2023

Petr Čech: the uplifting renaissance from the brink

Sammy Davis, Jr, the famous American singer, actor, dancer and comedian, who before his glitzy entrance into Hollywood stardom, was drafted into military service during World War Two. The African-American was relentlessly abused in the army. White Southern soldiers targeted Davis, who received a torrent of racist abuse. Upon return to his nation, he became an overnight sensation in 1951, thanks to his intoxicating stage presence and unique singing talent. Less than 7 years earlier, life seemed c