Andre Onana uses Vaseline on his gloves – our goalkeeping expert finds out why

When the match broadcast switched to Andre Onana, shortly after he made a save against Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai this month, the camera caught the Manchester United goalkeeper with a tub of Vaseline in his hands. It zoomed in tight on him as he smeared the contents of the container onto his gloves, while commenters laughed and wondered why he would use the product.

Before the camera panned away, I grabbed my phone, took a picture of Onana holding the bowl of Vaseline and sent a text message to Robin Streifert, goalkeeper of my club Angelholms FF in the Swedish third division, with the caption: ‘It looks like Onana is aware of the secret.”

“Yes, I talked to him about it last week!” he joked.

I vividly remember when Robin started using Vaseline on his gloves like it was yesterday. It was our first training after our summer holidays last year when he took a jar of Vaseline to the training field. I initially thought he might put some on his elbows and knees to soften the fall as he dove, but when he opened the jar and started smearing it on the goal post, and then on his gloves, I couldn’t help but laugh .

“What the hell are you doing? You want to catch the ball, don’t you?” I asked him as I smiled.

He looked at me with a small grin and replied, “You’re laughing, but believe me, it works! My grip has never been better.”

He told me how Bordeaux’s Swedish goalkeeper Karl-Johan Johnsson (or ‘Kalle’ for short) introduced him to it during a training session they had together during the holidays.

Robin said that, like me, he was initially skeptical and “expected the ball to slip out of my hands like a bar of soap.” But after getting some of the Vaseline through the ball onto his gloves during their session, he noticed the effect it had on his grip and knew he had to try it out for himself. After smearing some on his gloves, he was hooked.

“I couldn’t believe how much better my grip was,” he recalls. “I’m sure some of it was mental, especially when you’re trying something new, but it really felt like there was a benefit.”

When the ball started hitting his gloves just a little tighter than I remember before our summer vacation, I became intrigued and knew I would have to try it myself at the end of practice.

After the session ended, I ran into the locker room, grabbed a pair of gloves I had in my locker and headed back to the field. I took a little Vaseline, smeared it on my gloves and jumped into the goal. When Robin and our second goalkeeper, Lukas Bornandersson, started bombarding me with shots, I immediately noticed the difference and the impact the Vaseline had on my grip.

My gloves were a bit older and it had been a while since they had been used, but the Vaseline suddenly gave them new life. The only downside I could find was that I occasionally had to recoat my gloves once the effect wore off. That’s where the Vaseline on the posts came in handy. If I had to reapply quickly, all I had to do was go to the post office, wipe off a piece and wipe it on my gloves.

But I couldn’t figure out why it worked. Vaseline was a lubricant, why didn’t the ball slide through my fingers?

In the months since, I’ve done some research and learned the ins and outs of why it’s effective. My understanding is that latex is a porous material, so if the palm of the glove breaks down over time, dirt and water can get into the latex, eventually causing you to lose grip. Vaseline hydrates the latex of the gloves while also acting as a water and dirt repellent coating the glove, allowing the latex to do what it was designed to do: grip the ball.

After seeing Onana use it and having time to reflect on my own experiences with it, I knew I had to go further up the chain and talk to Kalle directly. I messaged him on Instagram asking if he had some time to talk about Vaseline. He replied almost immediately.

When we called a few hours later, there was an excited tone in his voice, almost like that of a little child who knew a secret and couldn’t wait to tell someone. Before I could even ask my first question, he enthusiastically asked me, “Have you tried it?”

I started laughing.

Although Kalle and I have known each other casually for over a decade during our playing careers, we have only spoken a few times. But when we spoke this time, it felt like two old friends were catching up.

“It’s so good, isn’t it?” he asked. His excitement and curiosity about what I thought was real.

“I know this may not be true for everyone, but for me it has made a huge difference,” he explained.

When I asked him how he first came across Vaseline, he couldn’t remember exactly who introduced it to him, but he was sure of one thing: it was at a Swedish national team camp during the 2015-2016 season.

“I was completely against it at first and a bit naive,” he said. “I had heard of it before, but never really believed in it. I thought it was just another fad that would disappear from the game as quickly as it seemed, but after a few practices and seeing the other goalies using it, I thought, ‘Okay, why not? I’m going to give it a try.”

He went on to tell me that a few different brands of Vaseline were used during that camp and while he could see the benefits right away, it wasn’t until he tried Vaseline with “the blue top” that he was completely sold. idea.

“I initially tried one brand for a few workouts, but once I was introduced to the other (the one with the blue top), I immediately switched,” he says.

“I still don’t know if it was Robin (Olsen) or Kristoffer (Nordfeldt) who introduced me to that brand, but it is by far my favorite. I remember buying four or five jars of the stuff and taking it to my club at the time. I still use the same one today.”

At the professional level, the pitch is watered before every training session and match, often making the ball that goalkeepers try to catch incredibly slippery. Moreover, when it is raining, catching the ball can sometimes seem almost an impossible task, even with the best latex gloves on the market.

Every goalkeeper knows the feeling of your gloves being soaked and struggling to catch the ball cleanly, while your hands feel like they weigh a hundred pounds. Vaseline’s job is to prevent this.

The biggest difference for Kalle since he started using Vaseline is the mental impact on him, especially when trying to catch the ball in rainy conditions. Kalle admits that he often had problems in the rain because the ball was difficult to grip, but after he started using Vaseline on his gloves he has seen a huge change in his confidence when catching the ball.

Kalle shows off his Vaseline covered gloves (Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images)

“The mental part is so important to have a good feeling while playing,” he said. “And the ability to catch the ball is enormous and gives me so much more confidence as a goalkeeper.

“During matches it is more natural to be safer and push or hit the ball, but now I catch the ball much more often than before. Vaseline has really made a huge difference for me.”

I was curious if anything had changed in his routine since he started using Vaseline and he said without hesitation, “I’ve learned how to use it properly.”

“I used to use a lot more of it than I do now, but now I know how much to use and when to use it,” he said.

He admitted that it took a while to get the exact combination correct and that he learned through trial and error, but said he has his routine down to a science these days.

On match days, he first puts water on his gloves, then wipes them with a towel and then applies a small amount of Vaseline to the palm of his gloves. He then applies a small amount of Vaseline to the tape of his shin guards, in addition to a larger amount on the goal posts. However, he emphasizes that the Vaseline on the posts is just his backup in case he runs out during the match, which he says doesn’t happen that often anymore.

Kalle said one of the funniest things that has happened is that at almost every club he has played for, he has become known to teammates and fans as the man who leaves Vaseline at every post in the country.

“I still receive messages all the time from former teammates in Denmark joking that I left something behind when I moved to France,” he said, laughing. “It’s actually quite funny.”

During our conversation it became clear how strongly he believed in using Vaseline, but I needed to know if he thought there were any downsides to using it.

“That it doesn’t work when the field is dry,” he said. “But I always have a water bottle with me so I can add water to the gloves if necessary. And when we play or train, there is always water on the field.”

As fascinating as all this was, I was still curious if he knew who introduced Robin and Kristoffer to Vaseline.

“I think Robin was introduced to it when he was in Copenhagen by the Danish goalkeeper Stephan Andersen and he was the one who first brought it to the Swedish national team. At least that’s what Stephan told me when I moved to Copenhagen in 2019,” he said, laughing. “Stephan is very proud that it was a Dane who introduced Vaseline to the Swedes.”

Kalle concluded our conversation by saying that he has introduced Vaseline to the goalkeepers of every club he has been to; the same thing happens every time.

“They are always so skeptical, just like Robin was when we trained together, but after they see the results I have in training and how many balls I catch, they always end up taking some Vaseline off the post and putting it on their gloves” , he said. “They always end up loving it.”

(Top photo: Andre Onana; by Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)