Fourteen ways of looking at a goalkeeper

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In his autobiography, the great English goalkeeper Peter Shilton wrote with characteristic modesty, “Some countries are known for producing quality things, Switzerland its watches, Italy its cars. British football was always renowned for the general quality of its goalkeepers.” Wilson tweaks Shilton, pointing out that the English aren’t alone:

“Actually, most major football nations seem to think they have a unique tradition of goalkeeping and it would be perhaps truer to say that England consistently produced good goalkeepers of the sort it admired”—stiffupper-lip types unafraid to get stuck in, without any of the flouncing or flapping you get from those Continentals. Meanwhile, Wilson writes, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain also make special claims to being nations of great goalkeepers.

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And before Americans get too excited about the one position in which they can hope to claim supremacy, Wilson cites an article by Giovanni Pacini, chairman of the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s technical committee, who suggests that the best American keepers have stood out overseas only because their careers have been long enough to allow them to unlearn all of the subpar coaching they received in the States.

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