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1) Rogério Ceni
Whenever a goalkeeper scores a goal, there are probably people who think that they have committed a crime against nature and who believe that such heretical behaviour will bring forth a storm of biblical proportions as punishment, washing the illogicality away. Yet by the same token, there is something inherently glorious about a goalkeeper who refuses to be constrained by the “rules” of “society”, which is why Stuart Pearce’s brainwave to have Manchester City’s David James galumphing about in Middlesbrough’s area on the final day of the 2004-05 season is a Hall of Fame moment. Weirdly unsettling but also totally adorable, like watching a cat trying to turn a door handle. Ha! Look at the keeper go! He thinks he’s people! He thinks he has opposable thumbs!
But these are life’s dreamers. Like David Brent refusing to give up on the idea that he was wasted as the manager of a small paper company in Slough, there are goalkeepers who are convinced they are wasted simply operating between the sticks. Fabien Barthez, for instance, was a chilled-out entertainer with delusions of grandeur and it could be argued that no one knows the smell of the onion bag better than a goalkeeper. To catch a thief, you must think like a thief, so to score a goal, you must first let in a goal. Admittedly that’s a stupid argument, but when has that ever stopped the Joy of Six in the past?
Yet while most goalkeepers are kidding themselves, some of these frustrated strikers actually do have something to offer going forward. Of course, leave it to a Brazilian to set the benchmark for his peers. If an English goalkeeper ever scored 112 goals in his career, the likelihood is it would be down to the wind catching 112 agricultural hoofs forward and sending them swirling over his opposite number, but that’s not Rogério Ceni’s style. Ceni, who plays for São Paulo, is that rarest and most cherished of species, a goalkeeper who also happens to be a free-kick and penalty specialist, and stands on top of the goalscoring charts, miles ahead of the rest of the field.
His record is not perfect and he has missed penalties, most notably in the last minute of a match against Corinthians last year, but he has also scored a Panenka against the same opponents. It is not clear whether Ceni had his membership of the Goalkeepers’ Union revoked after that.
Having honed his technique, Ceni is as big a threat with a dead ball as any outfield player – Zico once said, perhaps not entirely seriously, that he was better than him at free-kicks – and the joyous scenes when he scored his 100th career goal with a glorious effort from 25 yards were a sight to behold. Now 41, Ceni plans to bring a remarkable career to a close at the end of the season. No doubt he has something big planned for his final game.
Of course, Ceni is not the only goalscoring goalkeeper. He’s just the best goalscoring goalkeeper. But there are others, such as Mexico’s fashion-conscious Jorge Campos, who scored 38 goals, and René Higuita, who scored 41 goals. Until Ceni, though, Paraguay’s legendary goalkeeper, José Luis Chilavert, was the daddy of the lot. He first came to attention in England during the 1998 World Cup, when he became the first goalkeeper ever to shoot direct at goal from a free-kick in the tournament, narrowly missing against Bulgaria. He could be a fiery character and was involved in rows with Roberto Carlos, claiming he only spat at the Brazil left-back to defend himself after being insulted, and Faustino Asprilla, but he also had a humble streak, often shaking hands with the goalkeepers he had scored against.
And he was brilliant. A fine shot-stopper, he won personal awards for his goalkeeping and played for Paraguay 74 times and at two World Cups. He scored eight goals for his country, which is more than any other international goalkeeper, and his free-kicks were outstanding. That left foot knew how to manipulate a football.
Some people, those who have put the bald statistics to one side, say that Chilavert was better than Ceni. They have a point when you consider that Chilavert scored intentionally with a free-kick from the halfway line for Vélez against River Plate in 1996, a goal so good that the cameraman almost missed it and the River goalkeeper was so dumbfounded he simply fell over backwards as the ball flies in. Chilavert celebrated appropriately, both arms outstretched, a look of glee on his face, an amusingly slow jog to nowhere in particularly and, finally, a botched Klinsmann dive that ends up as a belly flop.
3) Charlie Williams
It was not until 1912 that the law was modified to say that goalkeepers could only handle the ball inside their area. Previously they had been allowed to pick it up anywhere inside their own half – honestly, one rule for them, another for the rest of us – which is why it was possible for two goalkeepers to score in a match between Third Lanark and Motherwell in 1910.
The first recorded instance of a goalkeeper scoring in England came on 14 April 1900, when Manchester City’s Charlie Williams scored in a 3-1 defeat by Sunderland. Although there appears to be no coverage available of the match from the time, the following report in the Times on 17 October 1958 did refer to it:
“One of the most remarkable goals ever scored in first-class football came in the fourth minute of the match at Grimsby when Dolejsi, the Prague international goalkeeper, scored direct from his own penalty-box. A short goal-kick to a full-back was returned to him, and Dolejsi kicked the ball hard upfield. Aided by a strong wind it soared high, bounced once on the edge of the Grimsby penalty box, over the head of the advancing Grimsby goalkeeper and into the net without any other player having touched it. The only previous instance of a goalkeeper scoring in this country was in 1900 [Joy of Six Corrections and Clarifications Department: this is actually the first recorded instance of it happening. Goalkeepers had scored in England between 1900 and 1958], when Charles Williams, Manchester City’s goalkeeper, scored against Sunderland with a prodigious goal-kick. Ned Doig, Sunderland’s Scottish international goalkeeper of that era, was the only other player to touch the ball.”
It is said that Williams’s kick bounced three times before going in and that Doig, who always wore a cap to hide his baldness, later said that the only reason it caught him out is because he was examining a damaged finger. A likely story.
4) Peter Schmeichel
“And … wait … yes … yes … it appears the goalkeeper is going forward … they’re beckoning him forward … or are they telling him to stay back … no, they’re telling him to go forward for the corner! They’re sending the goalkeeper forward!“
The above, without fail, is the words that fall out of every commentator’s mouth when a goalkeeper ventures forward at a corner to try to salvage an equaliser for his side. Usually such a fevered buildup leads to nothing, the delivery going nowhere near the goalkeeper, whose presence alone is supposed to unsettle the defending team, who we are supposed to assume will be completely unprepared for such an eventuality. The goalkeeper is not necessarily there to score – sometimes he just meant to cause havoc and spread panic. Two goalkeepers in the same area! Which one is which! Which one is ours! What’s that round thing coming towards me! Why is everyone shouting! Run! Run for your lives!
But it can work and it is exciting when it does. Peter Schmeichel, who scored 13 goals in his career, first found the net for Manchester United with a last-minute header in their Uefa Cup exit to Rotor Volgograd in 1995. “Schmeichel came out of his goal and the final minutes were played out with him using his huge bulk in the Russian area,” wrote Guy Hodgson in the Independent and the Dane also scored a volley for Aston Villa at Everton in 2001.
His finest goal was one that didn’t count, though, an overhead kick that looked to have taken United’s FA Cup fourth-round replay against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park into extra time, only for the flag to go up for offside.
5) Brad Friedel
By now, you are probably wondering when this is going to end. And also where the Jimmy Glass entry is. Well, there is no Jimmy Glass entry, because the loanee who scored the injury-time goal that kept Carlisle in the Football League in 1999 has had his own Joy of Six spot two years ago. “There’s nothing new to say about Jimmy Glass,” Rob Smyth wrote. “Glass’s goal is one of the great moments in British football, and his name is almost as evocative as that of Ronnie Radford.”
So this will have to do but what Glass’s earth-shattering escape act tells us is that it is difficult to beat the drama of a goalkeeper scoring a goal in the last minute, not least because it tends to be the defining moment of a match. Or sometimes a career.
Not always, though. At first glance, there is nothing particularly memorable about Brad Friedel’s last-minute equaliser for Blackburn Rovers in a nondescript Premier League match against Charlton Athletic in 2004. Admittedly Blackburn, who were struggling near the bottom of the table, had roared back from 2-0 down to level the match at 2-2 at The Valley, so it looked like Friedel had secured a vital point for his team by redirecting a wayward shot past Dean Kiely from close range. And that should have been that. Charlton, the inept fools, had thrown the game away and Brad of the Rovers was the hero. All that was left now was to see whether Blackburn could score again in the time left.
But wait! Barely a minute later, the ball was hoofed forwards by Charlton after the restart and when it dropped to Claus Jensen on the edge of the area, he looped a volley towards the top-right corner and Friedel, presumably still giddy and not entirely focused after his goal, got a hand to the shot but not enough to keep it out. Oh Brad! “I find it hard to speak,” Blackburn’s manager, Graeme Souness, said, an affliction that he fortunately rid himself of before becoming a pundit.
Anyone who has ever played football in the park or on the playground has experienced that creeping sense of dread when your goalkeeper, the ball in his hands, gets that glint in his eye. You know the one: it’s supposed to warn you that he has short-circuited and that you have to stop him before he sets off on a jaunty, doomed dribble that is supposed to be a tribute to Diego Maradona but will end with him losing the ball and the other side’s striker booting it into the empty net while you curse yourself for not acting sooner.
All of which is why no good can come from Laurent Monde’s absurd goal for Kouroucien in French Guyana. It will only encourage disastrous imitations and no one can possibly emulate Monde’s moment of genius. Unfortunately the grainy video only starts with him picking up possession on the right in his half so we do not know how the move began, but what happens next is truly ridiculous, Monde hurtling through the challenges and up the wing like a contestant on Gladiators blindly charging through The Gauntlet head-first and somehow managing to keep the ball despite always appearing to be on the verge of falling over, as if he is stumbling through a series of invisible hurdles. Presumably everyone was too scared to tackle him, mindful of the fact that you got an automatic red card if you even breathed near the opposition keeper on Fifa 98: Road to the World Cup.
Eventually Monde blooters a thunderous shot home from way out on the right, before being mobbed by his team-mates, who probably spent the entire sequence calling him every name under the sun until he scored. Confusion arises as the only name that it is possible to make out on the commentary is Stanley Menzo, a Dutch goalkeeper who starred for Ajax between 1983 and 1994. The likeliest explanation for this is that Menzo was regarded as a goalkeeper before his time because he was so comfortable with the ball at his feet.
As for the rest of you, though, don’t go getting any ideas.
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