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Football history repeats itself a lot, especially as farce, which was particularly true of goalkeepers this week. Take a story from one of the vintage English Champions League ties, in Manchester United’s famous quarter-final against Real Madrid in 2002–03. Everyone wanted to talk about Ronaldo’s hat-trick afterwards, which was what one golfer apparently tried to do on seeing Sir Alex Ferguson play a round. The United manager’s great’s response? “Yeah, but what about the goalie?”
Apocryphal or exaggerated as such stories may be, Ferguson did jettison Fabian Barthez the very next window: summer 2003.
Many Premier League coaches might have felt the same over the past few days – “what about the goalie?” – except they had just picked them, in huge decisions.
Igor Tudor and poor Antonin Kinsky set an unfortunate theme, picked up by Rosenior and Filip Jorgensen, and surprisingly perpetuated by Gigi Donnarumma. The Italian, widely seen within the game as a “Robin van Persie signing” from Pep Guardiola in terms of specifically buying a player to win now, had some bad moments in that defeat to Real Madrid.
The repercussions – and they’re not necessarily all negative – are likely to go way beyond the Champions League. They may influence relegation, the title race and who actually gets back into the competition.
The obvious importance of your goalkeeper has always occupied an odd place in football, since there are many coaches who privately admit that this most exposed of positions is the one they understand the least. Some of the greatest managers are notorious for having blind spots about goalkeepers. And that is logical. Look how few goalkeepers become managers. The position has long been seen as something separate from the rest of football, a different aspect of the game.
Their increased integration into general play, however, is part of the issue here.
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