"It's okay to fail": what Barthez tried to convey to the young goalkeeper on the first day of France training
Behind the laughter, there is skill
Laughter echoed across the training ground.
On the first day of France training, Fabien Barthez cracked jokes, eased the tension of the young goalkeepers, and even laughed at himself when he failed to stop a shot.
At the very moment Zinedine Zidane was speaking to the outfield players through his technique, Barthez was entering the team in a completely different way.
Laughter can, at times, convey something.
But what kind of laughter it is can only be known by those watching it unfold.
Two young goalkeepers were there
Two goalkeepers appeared on the France squad list for the first time this time around.
Guillaume Restes and Jean Butez.
The atmosphere a player feels before their international debut is heavy just to imagine.
Surrounded by seasoned players, it's easy to fall into a feeling of being "not yet anyone."
Into that space came Barthez, laughing after his very first kick, saying "That went in, I'd better get my body warmed up quickly," and when he made a mistake himself, Rayan Cherki and Ibrahima Konaté teased him, saying "That was M'Baye Niang's shot."
Was Barthez deliberately creating this atmosphere, or was it simply who he is, unfiltered, standing there?
Perhaps even he couldn't draw that line clearly.
What does a goalkeeper coach actually do?
The job of a goalkeeper coach occupies a strange position.
They cannot call out instructions during a match.
They never directly intervene in play.
It's the player who stands on the pitch, and it's the player alone who bears the solitude of those 90 minutes.
So what does the coach actually do?
Designing training that sharpens technique is, of course, a given.
But there is a view that, even before that, it is just as important to prepare the player to enter that training in an "open" state.
A body that receives shots while still tense cannot fully express its natural movement.
A player tested while afraid of failing cannot show who they really are.
The laughter Barthez brought on that first day may have been laying the groundwork for exactly that.
Are we underestimating "creating atmosphere"?
In Japanese youth development settings, the phrase "creating atmosphere" is sometimes treated as something merely supplementary.
Compared to the "substance" of teaching tactics, repeating technical drills, and making things usable in matches, atmosphere can seem like an afterthought.
But watching how Barthez behaved on that first day, one feels that priority order being shaken.
Why did a former France No. 1 goalkeeper with 87 caps approach training by turning his own mistakes into laughter?
It may simply be that this is who he is as a person.
But if that very quality of "being who he is" was functioning as part of his role as a goalkeeper coach, the story changes somewhat.
It means that, for a coach, technique and character cannot be separated.
Zidane and Barthez: two approaches on the same day
On the same day, in the same training session, Zidane surprised players with his play, while Barthez built the space through words and laughter.
This isn't about which approach is "correct."
Rather, if the two of them were walking different paths toward the same goal, that is precisely the richness a team can have.
Zidane shows through technique; Barthez loosens things up through atmosphere.
When the two overlap, the tension of "being called up to the national team" can turn into the eagerness of "I want to try this here."
That is not just something for the players—it is also a first step toward the team facing in one direction together.
Whether young players are in a place where they can "be themselves"
We don't know what expression Restes and Butez wore as they finished training that day.
But we can imagine what Barthez, whether deliberately or naturally, was trying to create for the two of them.
An atmosphere where it's okay to fail.
Firing a shot in and laughing "That went in," the coach himself making mistakes and being laughed at in turn.
No one there is perfect, and yet training goes on.
How important this feeling is for young players is something anyone who has actually played while feeling "under evaluation" will likely recognize.
In places where evaluating eyes are present, people tend to choose the "judgment that avoids failure" rather than their true judgment.
For a goalkeeper, that is especially fatal.
In a position that demands instant decisions, nothing is more dangerous than being in a state of "fearing mistakes."
The fact that Barthez was there was, in itself, already something
Why was Barthez chosen as France's goalkeeper coach?
There is, of course, the context of his long-standing relationship with Zidane.
But when choosing a coach, the feeling of "I want to work with this person" is often not merely an emotional preference.
Trust is not built on track record alone.
The true nature of trust lies in the accumulated time spent together and the layered understanding of "this is how this person moves in this kind of situation."
If someone judged that Barthez was a person who fit the atmosphere of the France national team, they must have seen something that footage of his playing career alone could never convey.
And that judgment took a certain shape, at least provisionally, on the first day of training.
If, indeed, laughter echoed there.
The players carried that day's atmosphere home with them
Training ended, and the players each returned to their lodgings.
We don't know what Restes and Butez were thinking that night.
But the memory of a first day spent laughing tends to stay with you even before the tension in the body does.
A coach's technique functions even if the player doesn't consciously remember it.
But the atmosphere a coach creates enters a player's body and influences how they move in the next training session.
Barthez probably knows this.
The fact that a goalkeeper who played 87 matches chose "laughter" on his first day as a coach feels, to me, like a quiet expression of everything he has learned through football.
What the specialized role of goalkeeper coach carries
The goalkeeper coach became established as an independent specialist role mainly between the 1990s and 2000s. Before that, it was not uncommon for managers who had been outfield players to also handle GK coaching. One trigger for this change was the diversification of skills demanded of goalkeepers. Participation in build-up play with their feet, controlling the defensive line, and managing aerial positioning at set pieces—roles far beyond simply "guarding the goal"—expanded rapidly, requiring a more specialized eye.
In parallel, research in sports psychology began paying attention to how the "safety of the learning environment" affects performance. Under intense evaluative pressure, people tend to prioritize "choices that avoid failure" over well-practiced movements. The way goalkeeper coaches came to take on the role of creating a space where players can try things safely, alongside pure technical coaching, overlaps with this trend.
If a goalkeeper coach is to take on the role of "creating a space" alongside technique, then the coach's personality cannot be separated from the function of coaching itself. Who is present there changes the quality of the training space.
Three choices for creating "it's okay to fail" on the training ground
- When a coach makes a mistake themselves and laughs it off, the atmosphere of the space shifts. When "failing" is placed there as a natural, ordinary occurrence, players feel less need to be ashamed of their own failures.
- Asking "what will you try next" before asking "why did you miss" becomes the starting point. By handing over curiosity about experimentation before the pursuit of causes, the direction shifts from anxiety toward motivation.
- Acknowledging the process out loud, separate from the outcome, broadens a player's frame of evaluation. A single comment like "that positioning just now was good" lets a player take home feedback beyond mere numbers.
- Refusing to call Jean-Pierre Papin's national team debut a "failure"—what a scoreless 90 minutes asks of us
- After being told "you're the problem"—the responsibility of choosing young players, and the courage to own a mistake
- 3 a.m., a heart shaken at gunpoint—Roma midfielder El Aynaoui's "situation with no choice," and what football cannot protect
