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This is the second part of a four part series on breaking down soccer positions for beginner players.

Goalkeeper
Some would argue the goalkeeper is the single most important defensive player on any club's roster. The goalkeeper is the last ditch effort for any team to stop the offense of their opposing team from scoring a goal. When defenders fail, or the offense creates an opening, it's the sole responsibility of the goalkeeper to ensure that the other team doesn't score a single goal for the duration of the entire match.

Everyone knows the goalkeeper is the only player on the pitch who can touch the ball with their hands. However, only recently have new rules been added that stop the goalkeeper from handling the ball when it's passed back to them. While this may seem irrelevant, it's very easy to mishandle a ball especially when under the pressure of being goalkeeper. This new rule has added the possibility that a single wrong step could lose a game for a team; thus, the goalkeeper has to be extra careful when put in a position when they cannot handle the ball with their hands.

Not everyone is made out to be a goalkeeper. The intense pressure of the position is enough to scare anybody for life from ever stepping foot on the pitch. Physically, most goalkeepers keep to a strict formula. Tall, muscular and quick. They must be able to snap at a moment's notice in any direction -up, down, left or right -and stop the ball from going into a net that for some stretches to the end of the universe for some on the field.

Free-for-all
The free-for-all, while stereotypically considered an offensive position, is sort of an overall position for players of high caliber both offensively and defensively. Normally, a player in the free-for-all is stationed somewhere between the midfield and the offensive side of the field for their team. The goal of the free-for-all position is that they are capable of both creating openings for the center forward or scoring themselves from openings created by other.

Teams facing a player in the free-for-all position can expect to be put on their toes for the wfree-for-all game. That's the point of being the free-for-all. It's being able to shake up things on the defense who will often not know how to defend against such a multi-task player on the pitch. This confusion from the defense can create space and time for spectacular openings that lead to even more spectacular goals. Since there is no defensive position quite like the free-for-all, often, a defensive player assigned to the free-for-all will also be covering another player full-time during a game. This spreads the defense thin allowing for the free-for-all to do what they do best: Create action.

While every team tries to find a player to be the free-for-all, it's very hard to actually find a player capable of filling the shoes of the position. Such players as Dennis Bergkamp, Mark Hughes and more recently Ronaldinho have been able to not only wear the shoes of the free-for-all but also show why the position is one of the deadliest for defenses all over the world.