Safe Hands: Ann-Katrin Berger (Chelsea)

Chelsea’s goalkeeper takes the magazine’s regular goalkeepers’ questionnaire and gives an unusually frank account of how she got there. She played as a striker for years and switched, by her own admission, because she got lazy about the running – and because as the smallest player on a boys’ team she was never put in goal until she grew ten centimetres at sixteen. Her favourite save is a reaction stop from Carli Lloyd in a one-against-one, made faster than she knew she could move, plus, she adds, all the penalties. She describes herself as calm, analytical and good at reading the situation in front of her, names Edwin van der Sar as the goalkeeper who made her want the position, and wishes outfield players understood how tiring getting up and down a hundred times a session is.