Robot goalkeeper better than the Bundesliga

Stuttgart - A robotic goalkeeper is better than human keepers in Germany's football Bundesliga, its inventors boasted Monday as they demonstrated the computer-controlled device, Goalias, to the media. Players from first-division side VfB Stuttgart, including Germany team player Mario Gomez, tried last week to outwit Goalias, shooting indoors at a full-size goal mouth from 11 metres out. Scientists have since fine-tuned Goalias. "We'd say now that Goalias can hold every second kick from Mario Gomez," said Peter Goehner, director of the Stuttgart University automation institute (IAS), which built Goalias and has invited the Germany women's side to try to beat it on May 22. The robot uses three video cameras to calculate the ball's trajectory and move a plastic keeper figure on a rail left or right to block it, all within 400 milliseconds. Goehner revealed Goalias' week point: it could still be fooled by some hard curving shots with plenty of spin. The robot project was devised to appeal to teenagers and encourage them to study engineering in Stuttgart. 
 

Liverpool goalkeeper Jose Manuel Reina has said that he may leave the club if manager Rafael Benitez decides to depart in the close season due to the ongoing boadroom upheavals at Anfield.

The Spaniard's future on Merseyside has been in question for large parts of this season following revelations that American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett had met with former Germany national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann in November to discuss replacing Benitez.

The first of those meetings reportedly took place in New York during a period when Liverpool were struggling to qualify for the knock-out stages of the Champions League, but it was Hicks's recent admission that chief executive Rick Parry was also in attendance at that first gathering that placed further question marks over the former Valencia manager's future at Anfield.

Spain internatioanl goalkeeper Reina joined the club from Villarreal in the summer of 2005 and under Benitez's stewardship has established himself as not only one of the Premier League's most consistent shot-stoppers, but also one of the Continents as well.

Reina suggested that although his contract was with Liverpool, he owed "a lot to Rafa because he was the one who trusted me, brought me to Liverpool and supported me, and of course the mutual affection is there. We will have to wait. Like I say, my contract is with Liverpool but, if the coach moves and there is the possibility of me joining him, if he coaches another team, of course I would think about that. I can't imagine being at Liverpool without Rafael Benitez."

 

Goalkeepers are a breed apart, in some ways the protected species of a contact sport, in other ways fearfully exposed.Instead of returning as Chelsea's last line of defense in the club's defining game of the season so far - Tuesday's second leg of the Champions League quarter final against Fenerbahce - Peter Cech was at home nursing 50 stitches in his mouth and chin. He is the goalkeeper distinguished by bravery and agility that makes him arguably the best, probably the highest paid keeper on earth.Cech has another distinctive feature, the black skull cap he has worn since a near fatal head injury 18 months ago.That time he rushed off his line and threw himself towards the ball on a saturated and skidding surface in an English Premier League match. His head struck the knee of Reading's Stephen Hunt. The shock of seeing the goalie lying prone while first aid workers worked feverishly to revive him and try to get oxygen inside him remains to this day in the mind of every one of us in the stadium that night.But he came back, as daring and as willing to meet physical danger as any man in his sport. The broken skull healed, the headaches remained, and a special dispensation for him to play in the protective cap was granted.This season, however, has not been his best. How could it be when Cech had already missed 22 games, a third of the season, through separate injuries to his groin, hip and ankle?His relationship with the club's medical staff is by now more intimate than with his defenders. He is a man of 25, married, and with the Euro 2008 tournament for the Czech Republic ahead of him. Because goalies are so different, he might expect to have at least another decade, perhaps longer, to build on the 56 caps he has for his country, and to be a part of Chelsea's determination to win trophies.But not on Tuesday, not for some time after a freak collision at training last Sunday put him back in casualty ward. There was snow on the ground, and a chilling pool of blood where Cech lay after a stud from the bottom of Tal Ben Haim's boot reportedly caught in the goalkeeper's lip, and the impact between the two caused extensive tearing of the lip and a wound in the chin that required plastic surgery.For those of a squeamish disposition, or those whose son or husband might be a goalkeeper, I won't go into more detail on Sunday's accident. But, who would be a goalie? And who would be a stand-in goalie, such as Carlo Cudicini, the 34-year-old Italian who is the son of a former AC Milan keeper, and who is getting more first team action than was anticipated this year.Some are born to it, some have it thrust upon them. In Cech's case, it started when he broke a leg at the age of 10. He was then an outfield player, a midfield who chased goals rather than tried to stop them. After his recuperation, the youth coaches at Viktoria Plzen put the boy in goal. There he stayed.The separateness of the goalkeeper has always puzzled those of us who were never inclined, possibly never brave enough, to put on the gloves and the jersey. There is quite definitely a difference inside, as well as outside, the skull of these special few who, by definition, are in a ten to one minority in every team that plays.The risk they willing take is countered by the fact that goalkeepers can have a longevity, an earning span, well beyond their team mates.Two of their breed, Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehmann, have been rivals and decidedly not friends for 20 years. Each is 38, Kahn has been the senior German national team No.1 for 86 caps, but began to be ousted after receiving the man of the tournament award at the 2006 World Cup, allowing Lehmann to push his total of German team appearances to 53.I say "allowing," but Kahn would never willing give Lehman a helping hand in anything. They are both singular men, competitive, remote, and so sure that their handling skills and their mental toughness ought to make them the automatic choice of any right-minded coach.Even a week ago, Kahn's bitterness towards Jürgen Klinsmann, the man who made Kahn give up the jersey to Lehmann, was evident. Klinsmann is to come home from California, where he moved his family, to take over as Bayern Munich coach after this season - and it is as well that Kahn, is calling time on his career of over 550 matches for Karlsruher and BayernThe goalie's parting shot, one of them, is to say that he does not think "his" club is in safe hands with coach Klinsmann.Lehmann, meanwhile, is also at odds with his club coach, Arsenal's Arsène Wenger. For two seasons, they got along just fine while Wenger trusted the German behind a side that became known as The Invincibles after breaking all manner of unbeaten records.This season, however, Wenger dropped Lehmann, seemingly permanently, in favor of the younger Spaniard, Manuel Almunia. For a time, Lehmann grumbled that his one or two mistakes were being unfairly punished after such a reliable record, but he can only sit and wait for misfortune to strike the preferred man and considers his options.Lehmann's professionalism keeps him training for the moment he is called upon. His German national team coach Joachim Löw has to wrestle with the keeper's lack of consistent match practice - against the fact that he has built up vast experience, almost match for match replicating the 553 games of Kahn."In bigger clubs," Lehmann said recently of the way he believes coaches think, "another guy comes in, delivers the same quality, and you don't care about the first guy any more."He was speaking for FIFA.com, and explaining that there is no real friendship between goalkeepers competing for the same position. His isolation, Kahn's too, is that they are of a different age, almost a different generation to players they share a locker room with."Age-wise they are nearer to my sons than to me," Lehmann says of his young Arsenal colleagues. "When I go out, I join in and I enjoy it. But I have children, I don't have time to go out with them a lot."Lehmann said he used to "socialize with Thierry Henry and Freddie Ljungberg, but right now when you look at Arsenal's squad, there is only Gilberto Silva who is my age and has children."

The goalkeepers, almost a different species of soccer play