Pick that one out!: the oddity of the goalscoring goalkeeper

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CB writes…

Picture the scene. It’s deep into injury time of a crucial cup match, and you’re desperately in need of a goal to take the game into extra time. The opposition have conceded a corner, and you’re all up in the box to try and scramble a goal – and by all up, that means your goalie too. The corner arcs in and rattles round the box until your keeper leaps high into the air, his head making contact with the ball…. and it’s in the back of the net!

It is often said that goalkeepers are a breed apart, and they certainly seem to be made of different stuff to your average primadonna of a centre forward. For a start, they have to have a thick skin since they will frequently be blamed for losses (as ex-England goalie David ‘Calamity’ James once put it “It’s not nice going into the supermarket and the woman at the till thinking ‘dodgy ‘keeper'”).

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They are often at least mildly eccentric, and always acrobatic (René Higuita (above) and his scorpion kick save, anyone?). These bursts of physicality are very different to the constant movement of the rest of the team, which may be why their playing careers are often much longer than your average striker or midfielder.

Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying aces, an object of thrilled adulation. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist and goalkeeper.

They don’t always necessarily make good managers (coaching outfield players is a completely different skillset and attitude, really, but there are exceptions like Nuno Espirito Santo at Wolves) – they can, however, be excellent captains (most of the time), and at the very heart and soul of their team.

And sometimes they even score goals too…

Jennings, Stepney, and the pre-Premier League era

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Almost as far back as football records go, goalkeepers have been hitting the back of the opposition’s net. It is said that Manchester City’s Charlie Williams was the first, thumping a long clearance down the pitch and into the Sunderland goal during a match in April 1900.

Nearly 120 years later, the goalkeepers are still at it (as you will see) – and we still love them for such improbable scoring oddities. Whether they score via a penalty, a free kick or from open play, the sight of the goalkeeper turned goalscorer never gets old. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it’s always worth a look…

Probably the most celebrated of such goals in the twentieth century English game came from Northern Ireland’s greatest ever keeper, Pat Jennings (above) – who is also remarkable for being one of very, very few players to be considered a legend on both sides of the North London divide. He famously scored a real cracker of a goal for Spurs in the 1967 Charity Shield match against Manchester United.

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This is a classic goalkeeper’s goal – the ball powerfully punted upfield and past the United keeper Alex Stepney, who clearly doesn’t anticipate it going in. Indeed, you can almost feel Stepney’s dejected bemusement in the wonderful image (above) of him picking the ball out of the net afterwards. Interestingly enough, Stepney himself perhaps went on to redeem himself somewhat by scoring two penalties for Manchester United during the 1970s!

Other pre-Premier League goalscoring goalies in the British game included Peter Shilton, Mark Crossley, Andy Goram, Steve Ogrizovic, Bruce Grobbelaar, and, in other corners of the Football League, Kevin Pressman and Mart Poom.

On the scoresheet elsewhere

A number of goalkeepers familiar to fans of Premier League and Football League clubs have hit the back of the net for teams elsewhere in the world too. Ex-Arsenal keeper Jens Lehmann (above) was the first goalie to score from open play in the Bundesliga – and both Manchester City’s Claudio Bravo and ex-United keeper Massimo Taibi have similarly scored in other European leagues.

More often than not though, goalkeepers are penalty scorers. Former Manchester United and Fulham shot stopper Edwin van der Sar is one such, scoring from the spot for Ajax. He joins a list of keeper spot kick specialists from around the world that includes Mark Bosnich, Artur Boruc, Simon Mignolet, and Nuno Espirito Santo.

Heading back to the English game and outside the top flight, there has to be an honourable mention for Jimmy Glass, whose famous last-minute goal for Carlisle United in 1999 saved the club from relegation out of the Football League and provoked the club’s chairman Michael Knighton to flights of fancy:

I believe in a Methuselah, Frankenstein, alien beings, flying saucers and the hand of God. But most of all, I believe in on-loan goalkeepers from Swindon who score goals in the dying seconds.

Incidentally, almost twenty years later, another temporary goalkeeper scored another crucially important last-gasp goal – this time in Italy’s Serie A. After a number of loan deals elsewhere, journeyman keeper Alberto Brignoli (below) had ended up at Benevento, then in their first (and thus far only) season in Serie A.

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Benevento had had a rough season, their fans suffering through a European record of 14 consecutive defeats. In December 2017, they played the usually all-powerful AC Milan, who might have thought they’d won 1-2 – until Brignoli sprinted up to head in an equaliser in the 95th minute! Brignoli’s goal gave Benevento their first ever Serie A point, but he couldn’t prevent them from being relegated to Serie B at the end of the season, sadly.

Robinson, Schmeichel, and the modern record-breakers

Paul Robinson (above, top) is another keeper well known for having scored twice in his career – once for Leeds United, and once for Spurs. The Leeds goal – an injury time header in a League Cup game against Swindon – is the one described at the beginning of this post (he also saved a penalty in that match). Conversely, his goal for Spurs was from a free kick, lofted high and long to bounce over the head of the Watford keeper Ben Foster, who frankly didn’t stand a chance.

His goalscoring antics still make him a bit of a hero in both West Yorkshire and North London even now. In a recent interview with the official Spurs website, Robinson commented:

My goal for Leeds was probably a better goal because it was intentional. There was a lot of luck involved in my Spurs goal. As much as I would like to say I meant it, I can say that!

Robinson is one of only five goalkeepers to have scored in an English top-flight league game in the twenty-seven years since the Premier League began. The other four are Peter Schmeichel (below, who racked up an astonishing total of thirteen goals over the course of his long career), Brad Friedel, Tim Howard (the two Americans scoring once each, for Blackburn and Everton respectively), and Asimir Begovic (whose record-breaking goal for Stoke hit the back of his opposite number’s net after a mere 13 seconds).

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But these Premier League goal tallies are as nothing compared to those of some modern keepers elsewhere in the world. The all-time record is held by the Brazilian São Paulo FC stalwart Rogério Ceni (below), who eventually scored a jawdropping 131 goals over the course of a 25 year career, including 14 in the prestigious Copa Libertadores. That’s more than some strikers manage!

A long way behind Ceni, with a mere 67 goals, is José Luis Chilavert of Paraguay.  However, he is also the only professional goalkeeper who is known to have scored a hat-trick, which is a pretty impressive feat in its own right. René Higuita is another keeper to have scored an impressive number of goals, with a final tally of 41 for an equally impressive number of teams.

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Then there’s Hans-Jörg Butt, third choice Germany keeper at the turn of the millennium, who scored 32 goals in total during his career, and who holds the unusual record of being the only goalkeeper to score three times from the spot against Juventus – for three different teams. To make this record even odder, one of these penalties was against his fellow goalscoring goalie, Edwin van der Sar!

There are many more keepers who have hit the back of the net, but this blog post is long enough already. However, taking the subject to its logical conclusion, what about goalkeeper assists? There are plenty of those too – a few choice examples can be found here. In the Premier League, the ‘keeper who has been of most help to his goalscorers is…. oh look, it’s that Paul Robinson again, with five…

Many thanks to Sid, who not only suggested the topic of this post but also dug out some very useful source material for it!