Radiolab - Radiolab Presents: The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper

Episode Date: February 9, 2011

This week on the podcast, football! No, it's not a Super Bowl recap. Jad and Robert present a piece from across the pond--a piece about soccer they fell in love with when they heard it at the Third Coast festival in Chicago.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Shorts. From W. N. Y. C.

See? Yes. And NPR. Hey, I'm Jada Boomrod. I'm Robert Filvic. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. So today we're going to do something a little different on the podcast.

We're going to present a story that you and I ran into. In Chicago. in Chicago. It won an award this story, and it's just quite wonderful. It's really cool. This is about soccer. And it happened to remind us about a show that we're putting together for the spring on the topic of symmetry. Chemistry, symmetry, symmetry, hair parting symmetry.

All different kinds. And by the way. But that's later. Oh, I'm sorry. You were about to say the cool part. It turns out that we get to do this show not only on the radio, but in three fabulous cities in the United States. Live. Yeah.

We have shows in New York. unfortunately that one's sold out but we will be in LA March 23rd in Seattle March 30th and it's going to be really fun and it'll be about symmetry Yeah so which takes us back to our subject

Soccer which At least appears quite symmetrical Yeah you got two teams 11 people on each side That's right you got two coaches Two sets of fans However there are two people on that field The goalkeepers on either side

Who are living in a very different psychological universe from the rest of the athletes And that's the subject The loneliness of the goalkeeper. And the reporter is Hardee Psyng Koli, who is, well, first of all, he was in his earlier life a goalkeeper himself. He's a book author and a regular presenter on the BBC. And he's talking to a guy named Bob Wilson, who's goalkeeper for a very famous British soccer team. Arsenal.

That's right. In the 60s and 70s. That's the golden age. And the piece begins with the following question. But what is it about goalkeepers? Are they a breed apart? they're the only individual in what is a team game. In other words, the other ten guys can make numerous mistakes in a game.

Even the Starstriker, he can miss five, six, eight chances in a game and score a winning goal in the 80-9th minute of a match, and he goes home the hero. And the reverse situation that is the goalkeeper, this lonely individual, the only one who's allowed to use his hands with a purpose of negating, the game, the whole purpose of a game of football is to score goals, and the one villain in the piece is the bloke between the sticks, the goalie. And all the other 10 guys around you understand that as well. They do think you're crazy. You are putting yourself in this

position where for 89 minutes you do the reverse, you play brilliantly. And in the 90th minute, you make a positional error or the ball, moves, swerves and dips, and it looks as if it's your fault. I've got this image of goalkeepers, mostly because I was the that goalkeeper that leapt for that high ball only to see the ball go into the back of the net. And that moment, can you explain to me that moment, Bob, when the rest of the team are walking back to the halfway line as you're picking the ball up out of the net? You're alone. I mean, I can give you a very, very good example of playing in an FA Cup final. And five days earlier, we've gone to White Hart Lane and we've become champions of England.

And so we've got an opportunity to become only the second club that century to win the double. So we go, we're playing Liverpool. With everything to play for in the 1971 Cup final. And I've had the best season I've ever had in my career. And there's suddenly Steve Highway cuts in from the left wing. I've probably got it wrong by a yard and a half. Highway on the edge of the box, a chance of a Liverpool Pabts, and it's there. He strikes for goal, and it flew in the back of the net.

One nil down, the doubles out the window, and Bob Wilson is suddenly the guy who is likely to cost Arsenal the double. Steve Highway makes it 1-0 for Liverpool. And as I spun round on my pants on the floor, Frank McClintock, our captain, put his hands on his hips, and actually mouthed, you stupid. It's there!

It's there! Charlie George! It didn't cost us. Charlie George won as the double. I finished up being Arsenal's player of the year in the double season. Fantastic. But to my dying day, when people meet me, they say, oh, what did you do with Steve Highway then?

It always comes up. Not the million good saves I might have made. It's always about, oh, you got your near post wrong, didn't you? Now here's a challenge that I've never understood. If you're a goalkeeper in a team that isn't very good, you're constantly vigilant. The ball's always coming at you. If, however, you're Bob Wilson playing behind 10 of the best players in the world at that time, for 89 minutes, of a 90-minute game, you don't have a great deal to do. How do you stay focused? Did you remember the bionic man? When the ball was at the other end of the field, I imagined that the guy on the ball, the opponent, was Steve Austin.

So he could turn around at any part of the pitch, 60 yards away, 70 yards away, 10 yards away, and strike a ball towards my goal. Rapidia, still on the air-trial. There's the cross in. Wagner with a header. Fantastic save by Schmichael. Absolutely.

By the parline, left-foot-cross. Here's the chance. Must score a dozen. Brilliant saved by Basso. Tips it. Left foot shot driven long. Smachl Samarkal saves again. Great save. What a crucial man he is. Right on across the area. John Chabber Brazil. And it's not there. What a magnificent save by Gordon Banks. A superb piece of running by Jarnino. Went down the right. Cross the ball. And there was Pallet coming in. That's it. Challenge. Go, Ned. Two off you go. Go on.

Here we are. Sunday mid-morning, south coast of England, Brighton. And in the background, you can hear some under-16s. 22 of them chasing a ball around a pitch. Well, actually, technically speaking, it's 20 of them. There's two goalkeepers at either side on their own, with no one to talk to the game to watch. The backs of their colleagues in their face of their opposition. Almost poetic.

It's me getting carried away with myself. Mom will cross the road. I'm here at meeting a man called Jim Wall, who is an actor. That was a good wee tackle there. Sorry, slightly put off by a great wee tackle. Now, Gem is acting in a Peter Flannery play called The Boys' Own Story, which is all about a goalkeeper. Yeah, how are they?

Hi, all right. So we've just kicked off, then? We've just kicked off, but we're about 10 minutes in, and the Pressing Panthers are a goal down, I'm afraid. Was that a goalkeeping error? It was not goalkeeping error. I'm a fully paid up member of the goalkeeper's union So I think even if I had gone through his hands

I wouldn't have said it as a keeper's fault No it was a very good long range Short and a very good midfield pass So I don't mean to be cruel right But see that goalkeeper there Is that our keeper or their keeper? No, that's their keeper Our keeper's the quality looking keeper

With the yellow top And a gloves See their keeper That's exactly what I looked like When I was a boy I don't mean to be cruel How would you describe him then? Slightly Lardy

slightly lardy I don't play in goal but I coach the goalkeepers down here but I have to say when when I was a kid the idea of going in goal just baffled me I thought why would you want to go in goal

I've never known I've always been fascinated by the kids who want to go in goal but later in my life when I became an actor I ended up doing a play about a goalkeeper so I got to meet goalkeepers I even did two days training down here with Brighton and Hove Albion No, no, no, no, no, no.

Is that a goal? Yeah, that's two. Sorry, that's two-nil to the other team. Look at the keeper. He's looking skyward. And he won't pick the ball. He won't pick the ball up. It's gone actually through the net.

I mean, nobody, that should have been cleared. The cross should never have come in. No. But the goalkeeper got the blame for that. Yeah. I think goal keepers get a rough deal. I mean, when we were doing the play, it was a very simple set.

It was simply goalpost and net. Okay, it's a full size. And set in the penalty. area of John McKenna, the greatest goalkeeper, never to play for England. So he's asking for the ball, talking as goalkeepers are supposed to do, to keep himself mentally alert.

And the thing is, he never gets the ball. They hate him. The team hate him, and they will never pass to him. Good tackle, Dave, lay off Dave. Come on, Dave, if you need me. All right, don't then. Well played, Dave. See what I mean?

They'd rather do without me. I'm the last line of defence. When I'm called into the game it means they've failed And they don't like that Do you lads Of course they're glad to have me here just in case Glad it's me throwing myself about Glad it's my head that goes in when the boots are flying

But they do without me if they could Wouldn't you? The object of their game is to score goals The object of mine is to stop them I'm here to spoil their game I can't win a game I can only lose it So how can I be one of them?

Not that I want to be one of them. When to them, I'm just a necessary evil. Go ahead, kid, have a shot. Let one go. No, no, don't tackle it. I could have saved that. Greg saved the ball, tipped it up in the air, but not enough to put it over the bar.

It came down behind him. And as he went for it, so he was charged by, send a forward. Loft House, into the net, ball as well. I was a young goalkeeper. I played for St John's Primary School in Seven Oaks. Poet and keeper, Murray Lachlan Young, keeper in the loosest sense of the word. We played a local big team, the sort of Manchester United of the area, which was Amherst School, and I think they beat a 17-0. The scoring of which goal broke the young, Murray-Lachlan Young? I think it was probably about 5 or 6-0, and I realised that there was probably only about 10 minutes of the game gone.

The team had gone from being encouraging to looking the other way. How long did it take you before you went back in gold? I think about 32 years. It may just be a coincidence that you are a poet and a writer and a performer. Do you think there is a commonality in that experience of the creative? Maybe for people who think they're a bit special. Perhaps it seems to be the ideal place because as a striker, you can always be partnered with another strike.

but there is only one goalkeeper and he gets to wear a different strip than the rest of the team and has his own universe to operate in. That's 4-0. That's not even half time. We are getting taken apart here. I wonder how much of his confidence has gone there? I bet I'm not.

Unlucky lads, heads up. Carriger heads the ball. Oh, it's a mistake by Duneck. Cangar headed the ball, back to the pole. He's goalkeeper. He just didn't pick it up. Extraordinary. When I think of how I used to feel

when I let a goal in. Ridiculous. That feeling of letting everybody down. Liby has let it go right through his body and into the back of the net. That is an appalling goalpeat. I used to go home after a match at City and literally shed tears

over a goal I'd let him. Blaming myself for the one that beat us. Going over and over and over it in my head. Why didn't I go for the cross? Why didn't I see him coming in on the back stick? Where was my cover? Yeah. Where was my cover?

my cover. Was the fullback sitting at home crying his eyes out? Yes. Poor old Paul Robinson, the England goalkeeper, was undone when a back pass came towards him. He aimed a kick at it, missed, the ball went into the goal. It wasn't his fault. The ball bobbled. It was a goal. It was looked comic. It looked like Robinson's fault. He knows it wasn't, and yet it still destroyed him. Chief sports writer of the Times, Simon Barnes, another writer, another man who spends his time. alone hoping to make a mark on the world. And yes, another former goalkeeper. We're everywhere. See, I think I'm developing a theory here and Simon's got a roll call of loners and mavericks to support it.

Yes, the Renaissance goalkeepers. It's a finalist and it begins with Albert Camus, author of The Outsider. All goalkeepers are by definition et tangier. But Camus famously said that all that I know most surely about, morality and the obligations of man, I know from sport. Others include Julio Iglesias. Che Guevara, Che Guevara was a goalkeeper out of necessity because he loved football, but he had asthma, so he couldn't cut it as an outfielder. The late Pope, John Paul II, was also a goalkeeper. And Vladimir Nabokov, who liked to be seen as sublimely different from the crowd, and this was what Vladimir Nabokov, a goalkeeper and occasional novelist, wrote about the hire of his two arts. As with folded arms, I leant against the left goalpost,

I enjoyed the luxury of closing my eyes, and thus I would listen to my heart knocking, and feel the blind drizzle on my face, and hear in the distance the broken sounds of the game, and think of myself as of a fabulous exotic being in an English footballer's disguise, composing my verse in a tongue nobody understood about a remote country nobody knew. Small wonder I was not very popular with my teammates. I think that's a beautiful moment of serenity that only a goalkeeper can know in the middle of a game of football. In the bustle of it all, you have time to yourself, time to reflect, time which many goalkeepers eventually used to destroy themselves,

certainly to destroy their sporting nerve. Now that comment by Simon, Che Guevara played in goal, of severe childhood asthma. Now, I've done a bit of research on that list of Renaissance Golis, and do you know, Albuhr Camus developed TB as a youngster? Yes. Vladimir Nabokov nearly died of pneumonia as a child and then was traumatised by having to flee revolutionary Russia.

Pope John Paul II. Mother died when he was nine. Brother, three years later. Makes you think. There is a sense in which choosing to play goalkeeper does show understanding that one is not as other people and certainly grief and trauma can do that particularly in children you accept that your position is to be

not the same as the rest and what I consider proof from the BBC archives childhood goalkeeper and solo violinist emphasis on the word solo it's Zach Pearlman four years old polio I did football I was goaling because I worked with crutches so I could stop balls a little easier and, you know, I stuping with my feet with my crutches.

And this time he's gone, and he shoots himself. A terrific one. And Sidlow just bangs it over the crossbar. He just bent like an arc of a bow there and just deflected that one. It was going right for the top corner of it all away, and it was a lovely save by Sidlo. That was a grand shot, the grand save.

When I see a great goal, it seems to me an incomplete experience. You should have a great shot followed by a great save to be a full, complete and rounded experience. I don't expect people to understand that. In fact, I hope people don't understand it. Being misunderstood is part of the goalkeeper's stock in trade. You wouldn't be a goalkeeper unless you wanted to be misunderstood. How can I not be obsessed with failure?

If I succeed, what have I done? What have I created? Nothing. Even the poorest goals go into the record books. Great saves are forgotten. This could be a panther's goal I love your eternal optimism The panthers get somewhere near the 18 yard box And Jim's thinking it could be a goal

So that's 4-0 at half time He's in tears The Preston Panthers keep us in tears Poor lad His gloves are off He's crying Poor boy's crying It's under 16s football on a Sunday morning

Can you hear that? I tell you what it is, the great goalkeepers. When all else fails, those guys in front of you, those ten guys, need to look around and say, the goalie will save us. Now that's the difference once you acquire greatness, true greatness. And very few goalkeepers really acquire that aura about them. And one of the greatest? Gary Sprague.

Brilliant keeper. But you know what? And this just about sums it up. It doesn't matter that he kept hundreds of clean sheets. Forget the cup and championship successes, never mind that he saved the blushes of countless dodgy defenders and there are plenty of dodgy defenders. The thing that defines Gary Spake, the loneliest of all lonely keepers, is the goal he scored against himself in 1967. and he's not even Scottish. Gone yourself, Gary, son. We were playing at Liverpool one day,

and three minutes before half time, cross came across, I caught the ball. Terry Cooper was on the left wing, he shouted to throw it to him. Just as I was going to throw to him, I seen Ian Calgary and run to him, so I changed my mind. I've done it millions of times,

just brought the ball back to my chest, but on this occasion, I missed my chest and went over my shoulder and right in front of the cop. And just as I was walking off, the DJ says we dedicate this record to Gary. Deso Conner just made this record, careless hands. David Dungest, the return ball from Derbyshire,

lets the short go and it's gone through. Leibon's turn it into the net. What a halver from Jens Raymond. Here come Estonia in the shot, giving it, and Robinson spills it for goodness sake. He's a neck for nothing. He's a neck for testing, Garson. Scott's great prize.

Franchard shot from 25 yards, and Carson was nowhere near it. Terrible fumble by the goal. It's the second half about to start, and that's the Prestonan Panthers Keeper walking back to his goal alone. Alone and four goals down. Do you know what? I wish I could say to you that I didn't know how that felt. I know how that feels.

I remember now why I stopped being a goalkeeper. Careless hands from Elvis Presley. Do you think he was a goalie? He had to have been a goalie. No one could have captured the tenderness, the loss, shame as well as Elvis. There's a lot of shame in his music. Yeah.

It could have been forged between those two goalposts. Oh, wait. I'm now being told that was not Elvis. Okay, forget it. Thanks to producer Adam Fowler and the presenter of that piece, Hardeeb Seing Coley. And it was a Ladbrook radio production. It was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4. I'm Chad Abumrad.

I'm Robert Krollwitch. We hope to see at those live shows. Yeah. Or at least at the next podcast. Hi, Radio Lab. My name is Melanie McCart. I'm from Washington, D.C. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Okay, I guess that's it. Thanks, guys. End of message.