Why does it seem impossible for goalkeepers to have as high overall/ potential as outfield players (especially at an elite level)?

[splishysplash123]

I swear that - particularly once you've reached the upper echelons and have a genuinely elite squad - it's near to impossible to find a goalkeeper with 5 or even 4.5 star current/ potential ability - far fewer than any other position. I know that stars aren't actually so important, but some stupid little part of me wants my lineup to be roughly balanced and it drives me crazy to have a GK most often a step below the rest of the team. (Like, it seems to me that the 10th best GK in the world is rated substantially worse than the 10th best RB or whatever, let alone ST/ CAM). Is this a result of it being difficult to get a super high CA with the attributes important to goalkeeping? Intentional to reflect the relative paucity of talent there as compared to attackers, or what? The same sort of issue bothers me to a lesser degree when it comes to like how few wonderkid defenders there are relative to forwards or whatever, but its so egregious with goalies. Is that just the way it is, or am I doing a terrible job of developing keepers or what?

 

Presuming it is the way the game is meant to go, do you think that that makes sense? I know that this is kind of a ridiculous complaint, and I still love the franchise, but I thought I'd put it out there.

[turnip]

There are too many goalkeepers in the game, to make sure you always have at least one useless schlub to put between the sticks if you're playing a youth-only save. 

But - obviously - you can only have one goalkeeper on the pitch at any one time, unless you're really committed to doing things the hard way. And even if you're being as proactive as possible with having a couple of good goalkeepers in your squad who you rotate to make sure each one, you're the only club doing that. And goalkeepers get injured far less often than outfield players, so opportunities for the backup to get game time are limited. So fewer goalkeepers get the kind of opportunities they need to develop well.

Add to that, that goalkeepers typically develop later than outfield players, but the game still starts locking off the 'star' values once a player hits 22 (which seems to be based on the development pattern of outfield players), at which age most goalkeepers still aren't getting first-team game time for a good team. So the scouts will be docking points for: them not getting playing time, for having a poor reputation (relatively), for having relatively low CA compared to other players their age, and for having developed less than other players their age.

And if you're an elite team, it's even worse. Because scouts already do a pretty poor job of identifying the highest-potential players, and now you're asking them to find players who already have a bunch of cards stacked against them. 

 

So, yeah. The best goalkeepers are hard to find.