If Antonin Kinsky is looking for inspiration for how to rebuild his Tottenham career, he won’t find it here. These keepers were finished after f**- ups…
As hard as many might have laughed at Spurs in Madrid on Tuesday night, you would have to have a heart of stone to feel no empathy for Kinsky.
The Tottenham keeper was given his Champions League debut by Igor Tudor only to be hooked after a nightmare 17 minutes, replaced by the Spurs stopper already dropped by the interim manager.
Bouncing back from such ignominy will be tough for Kinsky. Not impossible, especially when Spurs bin Tudor, but for some goalkeepers, big errors have been impossible to recover from without a change of scene.
Here are six who paid heavy prices for their mistakes…
Loris Karius
We start with the most obvious one, the OG of condemned keepers…
Liverpool ignored the warning signs that Karius might not be the top-class stopper their ambitions required around 2017/18. The German was signed at the start of the season before, after which he eventually won the battle for the gloves ahead of Simon Mignolet, more as the least-worst option rather than because Jurgen Klopp or anyone else at Liverpool truly believed he would be the No.1 for years to come.
A number of mistakes – some that were costly and others that went unpunished – sent Karius to Kiev for the 2018 Champions League final in less-than-impenetrable mood. Liverpool had already lost their best player at the top end of the field before their goalkeeper gifted Real the opener early in the second half, his roll-out read and intercepted by Karim Benzema.
Liverpool levelled quickly – then Gareth Bale took over. Four Kariuses won’t have stopped the Welshman’s brilliant overhead kick, but a cardboard cut-out of Bruce Grobbelaar might have kept out his second, Real’s third, that killed the game for the Reds.
Upon the final whistle, Karius was in tears, his apologies falling largely on deaf ears. Klopp offered an explanation that his compatriot was actually playing most of the second half concussed but that didn’t stop him from going straight into the market to break the world transfer record for a goalkeeper.
Karius never again played for Liverpool, seeing out the remainder of his contract largely on loan at Besiktas and Union Berlin.
MORE: Reappraising Loris Karius’ 2018 Champions League final catastrof*ck: was it really *that* bad?
Jim Leighton
Many might expect Massimo Taibi to be Manchester United’s representative here, but the Italian was given a chance for atonement after his most famous mistake: letting Matt Le Tissier’s pea-roller trough his legs at Old Trafford. Sir Alex Ferguson fielded Taibi the following week at Chelsea, where he conceded five goals.
Leighton never got another go. Had he been offered it, he might have told Fergie to f*** off anyway.
Their relationship never recovered after Ferguson ruthlessly dropped Leighton for the 1990 FA Cup final replay. The United boss pinned the blame for two of Palace’s three goals in the first final on Leighton, bringing Les Sealey in from nowhere. Ferguson later explained his thinking: “Was he a better keeper than Jim? No, but he thought he was, and that can sometimes be important in a cup final.”
Indeed it was. Sealey was solid while keeping a clean sheet in United’s victory. He became a cult hero and Ferguson was finally off and running at United, but his bridges with Leighton were burned forever.
The Scotland keeper played once more for United, in a League Cup tie at Halifax, and after two years in the doldrums as fourth-choice at Old Trafford, he returned north of the border and rebuilt his career. But the resentment between him and Fergie runs deep. “We’ve never spoken since and never will do again,” said Leighton in 2018.
MORE: Kinsky joins the most humiliating substitutions ever, featuring Mourinho and ‘really angry’ Klopp
Scott Carson and Rob Green
The England keepers are lumped together here because their tales are almost identical.
Carson profited from Paul Robinson’s ropey form to get ahead of the England no.1 at the very end of the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. All England had to do was avoid defeat against Croatia at Wembley in November 2007, and Steve McClaren would be taking them to Austria and Switzerland the following summer.
Eight minutes into his second cap – the first came in a friendly the weekend before – Carson let Niko Kranjcar’s speculative 30-yarder through his grasp and he was beaten again six minutes later. England rallied back for 2-2 but then suffered the defeat their performance deserved, costing them a place at the Euros finals and McClaren his job.
Carson never started for England again, his two subsequent caps coming as a sub in friendlies.
Green suffered a similar fate after a similar error against USA at the 2010 World Cup. He was immediately dropped by Fabio Capello and made to wait almost two years for his next and final cap in a friendly before the 2012 European Championships.
MORE: Tudor ‘kills’ another Spurs career besides his own as Kinsky becomes humiliated collateral damage
Jack Bonham
If there is anything to be said for Bonham’s nightmare debut in 2013, without it, we would never have had the ‘Now here come Watford… DEEEEEEEENEEYYYYYY!’ moment from the Championship play-off semi-finals.
The Hornets, though, would doubtless have preferred to swerve the play-offs – they lost the final – and gone straight to the Premier League via automatic promotion, which they had within their grasp on the final day of the season.
Watford were at home to Leeds, before which Bonham was going through his usual third-keeper jobs. Warm up the starter and sub, then shower and slip out of sight. But Manuel Almunia did not make it through the warm-up and was replaced in the XI by Jonathan Bond, meaning Bonham – without a set of long studs or match gloves – was bumped up to the bench.
He was only there for 24 minutes before Bond was injured too. Bonham was on for his senior debut – which could not have gone much worse.
The 19-year-old academy product was at fault for both goals as Watford lost 2-1, blowing the chance to go up automatically. It was Bonham’s only appearance for Watford, who cut the teenager loose at the end of the season.
He joined Brentford and endured a similarly nightmare-ish debut for the Bees too, coming off the bench to blunder in a 4-0 defeat. A loan to Southern League Premier Division club Arlesey Town gave Bonham the chance to reset before he forged a decent career in the Football League, where he currently plays at Bolton.
Cieran Slicker
We must wait to see if Slicker recovers from his nightmare Scotland debut last summer to ever play for the national team again. But the signs don’t look good.
The Manchester City academy graduate wasn’t ready for the one cap he now has; Slicker, by then at Ipswich Town, was yet to make his senior league debut when he first represented his country as an early substitute in a friendly against Iceland.
He was beaten within two minutes and twice more in a 3-1 defeat. Slicker, arguably Scotland’s seventh choice, was culpable to varying degrees in all three goals and was later ironically cheered by the Hampden crowd when he caught one.
“It’s difficult for Cieran, I really feel for him,” Steve Clarke said after the game. “He got thrown into a situation that he wasn’t quite ready for but Craig Gordon’s injured, Liam Kelly’s injured, Zander Clark is injured.
“The only good thing is it came in a friendly match. I’d imagine Angus Gunn won’t play the next game.
“I’ve had young Callan McKenna in the squad so he’ll travel then we’ll have a look and see if we can find another goalkeeper in Scotland who’s not on holiday.”
Slicker has not been in a Scotland squad since but he is making progress at club level, gaining experience in League Two as Barnet’s No.1 while on loan from Ipswich.