How good was Katie Lund in 2022?

When it comes to soccer, there are those who are in the “Keeper’s Union” and those who are not. I am unapologetically in the “not” category. I think most attacking players and probably almost every true striker will tell you that if they have done their job and hit the ball precisely as they meant to hit it, they don’t believe it matters one iota who is playing in goal. Nonetheless, Kailen Sheridan won NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year earlier this week and probably deservedly so. Players on good teams win individual awards. Those awards are frankly quite meaningless and just about every player in every sport would trade in an individual honor for the top team honor. Sometimes, like last season, you get to have your cake and eat it too like Aubrey Kingsbury, Ashley Hatch, and Trinity Rodman.

I personally only think it matters it you have a bad keeper. There is so little variation in some goalkeeping statistics, that as long as you aren’t a liability, you are probably good enough at the level to which you have achieved. However, it was interesting to look at the season stats for goalkeepers from American Soccer Analysis. Here is a look:

Each line represents a player. One player leads the league in 3 categories. The performances in those 3 categories have 3 out of the 4 best top end performances (as measured by the number of standard deviations from the mean) in the league this year. The other top performance (in passing) was led by Kaelin Sheridan. One guess as who the other player is. If goalkeepers are important, then their contributions have to measured in numbers. When you do that, it’s frankly no argument that Katie Lund was the best statistical keeper this year. Part of that is likely due to opportunities to stop shots, but her performance was still criminally overlooked.