Why the importance of a goalkeeper cannot be underestimated

Jonathan Wilson

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Top goalkeepers such as David de Gea, Hugo Lloris, Petr Cech and Iker Casillas are in demand this summer and rightly so as a save can be worth as much as a goalSo far, this has been the transfer window of the goalkeeper. Petr Cech has already joined Arsenal and David de Gea, Hugo Lloris and Iker Casillas are all possibly on the move, each in turn provoking their own search for replacements. The slight surprise is that it hasn’t happened before: after all, very few clubs have more than one top-class keeper – the dilemma Chelsea faced last season, replacing Cech with Thibaut Courtois, is so rare that the closest precedent is perhaps Leicester City in 1967 deciding they could sell Gordon Banks and replace him with the 18-year-old Peter Shilton – so when one moves it should provoke a chain reaction.
Perhaps the truth is simply that goalkeepers have never been particularly appreciated. Lev Yashin remains the only goalkeeper ever to have won the Ballon d’Or. In England, Shilton is the only goalkeeper ever to have been named the PFA Player of the Year and Neville Southall and Bert Trautmann the only goalkeepers ever to have won the FWA award (there is an abiding oddity that an individual award in a team sport should have paid so little attention to the most individualistic position).
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