Goalie: The Existential Position

Who, at this very moment, is the most successful striker in the world? Is it Romario of Brazil? Germany's J--rgen Klinsmann? Newcastle's Andy Cole? Well my nomination is none of these. It is Jose Luis Chilavert of the Argentine club Velez Sarsfield, and if you are wondering why you have never heard of any manager ready to stump up several million dollars for his scoring abilities, the explanation is simple: he is a goalkeeper.


Chilavert is a penalty specialist -- both at saving them and scoring from them. He has taken 30 in his career and converted 26, a success rate no outfield player can equal. Now he has taken to free kicks.


Last week, in the final minute of a goal-less league match, his side was awarded a kick just outside their opponents' penalty area. Chilavert rushed the length of the pitch and begged to be allowed to take the kick. A furious row then ensued as his captain Roberto Trotta refused and Chilavert replied that, in that case, he would not return to his goal. Trotta relented and Chilavert slammed a spectacular shot into the net.


With this kick he became yet another member of that ever-growing band, the Eccentric Goalkeepers Club. This unofficial body has been recruiting ever since the game began. Its members range from the clownish (Liverpool's Bruce Grobbelar used to give his defenders anxiety attacks by dribbling the ball well out of his area), the aggressive (turn-of-the-century keeper Fatty Foulke once picked up an opposing forward by the legs and banged his head repeatedly on the penalty spot for daring to shoot at his huge stomach), the ludicrously courageous (German Bert Trauttmann played on in the 1956 FA Cup Final after sustaining a broken neck) and the voluble (Manchester United's Alex Stepney once broke his jaw yelling frantic instructions to his defenders).


My own favorite is Leigh Richmond Roose, a Welsh international before the Great War. He was a doctor and man of independent wealth who would hire a private train to matches rather than take the official team one, often faked injury to fool opponents, frequently joined his forwards in attacks, engaged the crowd behind his goal in lengthy conversations and never once in his long career allowed his undershirt to be washed.


Quite what makes so many goalies behave so strangely is one of the great mysteries of the psychological sciences. Of course they dress differently, play differently (although not so differently as 80 years ago when they were allowed to handle the ball up to the halfway line) and are required to show a bravery altogether more calculated than the spontaneous heroics of their colleagues.


I suspect, however, that their eccentricity goes deeper than that. Theirs is a lonely job, they are isolated from their teammates for all but a few minutes of any match. Thus, to this, the team game par excellence, are attracted men whose free spirits would otherwise have them shun anything but the most individual of pursuits.


Above all, goalkeepers have time to think (sometimes a dangerous luxury in sport). This aspect of their calling has always attracted the more contemplative sorts. Pope John Paul II was the man between the posts for a Polish amateur side and Albert Camus filled the position for Algiers University, where he was possibly the world's first existentialist goalkeeper. He also paid the game one of its more extravagant compliments, once writing, "All that I know most surely about life, I owe to football."


There is, as far as I can tell, precious little evidence that the insights in his novels are directly attributable to trying to keep a clean sheet for his alma mater. For a major literary figure ruminating on the delights of goalkeeping we have to turn to one Vladimir Nabakov, who kept goal for his college while at Cambridge.


He wrote fleetingly of these Saturday afternoons in his autobiographical note "Speak Memory," perfectly describing the prolonged inactivity that is the goalkeeper's lot: "As with folded arms, I leant my back against the left goalpost, I enjoyed the luxury of closing my eyes and I would listen to my heart knocking and feel the broken drizzle on my face and hear, in the distance, the broken sounds of the game."