All in all whats the point of a wall....

I’d be amazed if the football data analysts haven’t looked into this. It wouldn’t surprise me if from certain free kick angles a wall was more of a hindrance but I guess the challenge would be convincing goalies to trust the data.

Definitely heard discussions about it in the past. There's a growing school of thought on not bothering to use walls, men on posts seems the thinking allowing the goalkeeper to cover the angle better and have more visibility. Issue with data is that no-one's done it enough to draw a decent comparison, with such a tiny sample size the data itself is useless

True on goalies faith though, if you grow up doing it a certain way there's some kind of comfort in it. I play in goal for a floorball (indoor hockey) team and whilst it's often a tactic for defenders to screen the keeper, I hate it, as it impinges visibility, so have taught my defenders that my area is out of bounds to them as I need that extra reaction space

I wonder if it's as much to intimidate the forward, to try to restrict their options. But that's out of the water now though as forwards spend so many hours practising free kicks against walls
 
It's all a bit subjective as to what distance from goal you stop putting a wall up - 25 yards, 30 yards ? who the kicker is, the strength and direction of the wind, the angle from goal . I suspect the goalkeepers have the final say on this. The Mahrez one I think was a marginal case at best for a wall - it was a long way out. The one on Saturday I think every keeper in the league would have put a wall up.

Well yeah - the goalie has the final say etc etc.
 
Walls!!
They were brilliant back in the 50s-60s.
You could use them for playing all sorts of games.
Football and Cricket being the most obvious. Ted Dexter at the wicket smashing 4s all over the place and Jimmy Greaves scoring another beautiful hattrick.
They don't make walls like they used to.
 

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