When it comes to the goalkeeper’s uniforms in soccer, one of the first things that you might notice is the fact that they wear jerseys that are different in color than the jerseys of their teammates.
You might also notice as you watch more and more soccer games that the green color is a common jersey color for goalkeepers.
In simple words, there is a large number of goalkeepers that wear the green color on the field. So what’s the deal? Why is the green color a special one when it comes to the goalkeepers?
Why do soccer goalkeepers wear green?
The main reason why soccer goalkeepers use green more commonly as their jersey color appears to be purely tradition. The goalkeeper’s jersey colors were limited to a certain number of colors in the old soccer days, and it just happened that the green color was the more commonly picked color.
Today, there aren’t a lot of restrictions when it comes to what color the goalkeepers can pick (as long as the color is different than that of the rest of the players), but it seems that the tradition of picking the green color as the goalkeeper’s jersey color still has its place in soccer.
One quick side note, I might have made it seem like the goalkeepers themselves are the ones that pick their jersey color, but it’s usually the club who picks the color and not the goalkeeper.
The clubs also try to make changes to their jerseys every single year in terms of design and color variations just to be able to sell jerseys on a regular basis. You can learn more about this by reading this article.
Now back to our topic. It is worth noting that the green color hasn’t been the only popular color for soccer goalkeepers in the past few decades.
Other colors have also been trendy in the past few decades too. Yellow, blue, black and other colors have commonly been used by soccer clubs and international soccer teams too.
Does the goalkeeper’s jersey color have any significance?
The main significance of the goalkeeper’s jersey color is that it is different from the color of the other jerseys on the field.
In other words, the goalkeeper’s jersey color has to be different from their teammate’s jersey color, and also their opponent’s jersey color.
This avoids any confusion when a large number of players are packed inside the penalty area during a corner kick, and it makes the goalkeepers stand out during the whole game.
But what about the performance? Does the goalkeeper’s jersey color have any significance when it comes to performance?
If you search online, you might find several people discussing how the green jersey color helps the goalkeepers blend with the grass color which makes them less noticeable by their opponent.
They claim that since the grass on the soccer field is green, then wearing a green color as a goalkeeper can make the opponents take more time to locate the goalie which gives the goalie more time to react.
But is this really the case? I personally don’t think so.
Even if the goalkeepers are wearing a color that is similar to the grass color, how much do you think it would take for the opposing players to be able to identify the goalkeeper? Milliseconds? Does this really affect the outcome of the encounter with the keeper?
It’s also worth noting that professional soccer players keep training and improving their spatial awareness skills on a regular basis since these skills are vital when it comes to how they perform on the field.
This means that the soccer players are usually well trained to keep track of everyone’s position on the field.
With that said, until some research comes up with concrete evidence, I personally do not believe that the green color makes the goalkeeper significantly less visible to the strikers of their opponent team.
What’s interesting is that there has been a study made on the effect of the goalkeeper’s jersey color during penalty kicks, and the results suggested that it is the red jersey color that may give the goalkeeper an advantage during a penalty kick rather than the green color or any other tested color.
The organizers of the study gathered a number of experienced soccer players, and made them take penalty kicks against goalkeepers wearing different jersey colors.
Less goals were scored against the goalkeepers wearing the red color.
Still though, until there has been some extensive research when it comes to the colors of the goalkeeper’s jersey, no assumptions should be made.
With that said, we have reached the end of this article. If you are interested in reading more, you can check one of these related articles on this blog: