Whatever Happened to the Great English Goalie?
Will Anybody Stake Their Claim To Be England's No.1 in 2010?
What a day yesterday was for the armchair fan, eh? The Merseyside derby, Arsenal v Chelsea and finally El Clásico – Barcelona v Real Madrid.
The wealth of attacking talent on display was simply astonishing – Gerrard, Arshavin, Drogba, Ronaldo, Messi, err…David Ngog. But it wasn’t the attackers who stole the show by any means.
In two of the games it was the goalkeepers who stood out – two keepers who don’t even get in their national team’s starting XI – Pepe Reina and Victor Valdés.
The reason they don’t get in the Spain side is because of another keeper on show yesterday – Madrid’s Iker Casillas. The amount of top quality keepers Spain have at their disposal is frightening.
Casillas is the best keeper in the world and Reina and Valdés are easily in the top five or six. It’s not surprising Manuel Almunia has expressed his desire to play for England – he’s got naff-all chance of getting anywhere near the Spain team.
It got me wondering at how frustrated Reina and Valdés must be at being behind the world’s no.1 for their country? They would probably both start for any other national team apart from Spain. They’d definitely both be England’s no.1. But that’s not really saying a lot, most foreign keepers in the Premiership would walk into the England side.
It’s fair to say that the following keepers would all be England’s no.1 if they were English: Petr Cech, Edwin Van der Sar, Brad Friedel, Shay Given, Mark Schwarzer, Tim Howard or Jussi Jaaskelainen.
What happened to English goalkeepers? We used to have the best goalies in the world like Gordon Banks, Peter Shilton, Ray Clemence and David Seaman. Now, we produce such bad keepers that if anyone English shows any sign of being half decent then they’re straight in the squad – Joe Hart and Joe Lewis spring to mind.
I’m not knocking Rob Green or David James because they’re both decent keepers. Decent. Not brilliant and definitely not world class. I am knocking the likes of Ben Foster, Paul Robinson and Scott Carson though. These are keepers who have only got into England sides in the past because of injury and because, frankly, there’s no-one else.
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