Simon has a BA in Sports Studies, holds The Uefa ‘A’ Coaching Award, The Uefa ‘A’ Goalkeeping Award and The F.A. Coaching Diploma for Coach Educators and has worked as a goalkeeping specialist on The F.A. ‘A’ Licence courses at Lilleshall.

Simon Smith is one of the leading goalkeeping coaches in the country; he has spent six seasons as Sir Bobby Robson’s goalkeeping coach at Newcastle United F.C, working with the Republic of Ireland’s Shay Given and Steve Harper.

For the past 10 years, Simon has run his own goalkeeping coaching company – Simon Smith Goalkeeping.

Simon Smith Goalkeeping has run and is running:

• One day goalkeeping courses in the North East and Nationwide
• Weekly goalkeeping courses
• 3 or 5 day goalkeeping courses
• Residential goalkeeping courses
• Residential coaching weekends for goalkeeping coaches
• Residential coaching weekends for senior goalkeepers
• Goalkeeping practical and seminars for the Icelandic F.A.
• One to One goalkeeping coaching sessions

Simon has already worked overseas in North America and Iceland as a goalkeeping consultant, setting up courses for coaches and goalkeepers.

For the Icelandic F.A., Simon delivered a two day course for coaches; this included:

• a power point, classroom based seminar
• video and DVD analysis
• coaching theory
• developing a programme
• goalkeeping psychology
• the role of the goalkeeping coach

Simon then put on practical sessions covering all aspects of goalkeeping: goalkeeping specific warm ups, handling and footwork, shot stopping, diving saves, one v one, dealing with crosses, dealing with the back pass and distribution.

Simon has also developed structured goalkeeping programmes for younger goalkeepers 8 – 18. Due to his back ground and experience, Simon is equally at home working with coaches, senior international goalkeepers and under 9 goalkeepers – male or female.

To back up this work, Simon is the author of Goalkeeping for Soccer-Techniques, Skills and Practices and produced video/DVD’s Keepers Classroom-Techniques and Skills and A Degree of Goalkeeping-Techniques, Skills and Practices. In the world of goalkeeping it doesn't get much better than that!

Simon has also taken his coaching and teaching skills into the world of cricket and worked one to one with two England wicketkeepers – James Foster and Geraint Jones. Simon has also worked for Kent County Cricket Club as a consultant, working on improving fielder’s footwork, catching and diving techniques. He has also tutored on the ECB level 4 Wicket Keeping Module for the past three years, conducting practical sessions on footwork, catching and diving and seminars on coaching theory, talent identification and the role of the specialist coach.

Simon is developing his consultancy work in the US working in conjunction with International Goalkeeper Training; he is organising and delivering goalkeeping courses in the winter, spring and summer in New York.

Simon is working as a Goalkeeping Consultant to the Canadian Soccer Association working at all levels from the Men’s national team to youth teams.

As part of developing goalkeeping in Canada, Simon is writing coaching and development programmes for the Canadian Soccer Association, British Columbia Soccer Association and the North Shore Player Development Programme in Vancouver.

Through the DTI Global Watch Secondment Scheme, Simon is going to under take a year long secondment funded by the DTI spending time in Canada and the UK, investigating the ‘biomechanics of goalkeeping’ in order to write a definitive guide of goalkeeping techniques based on scientific research. Simon hopes this research will also have a cross over to other sports such as cricket wicket keeping and fielding and baseball fielding to name but two.