Lush Gutters

Nothing stirs me more than the desire to be good at something. Even better if other people know it.

I am a firm believer in the importance of being humble. Yet I also feel as though if you’ve worked hard to be good at any particular skill it should be considered acceptable to proclaim, in the most appropriate, socially acceptable terms, “Yeah, that I can do.” There’s not a lot in this life to which I feel I can apply this maxim, but goalkeeping is one. Perhaps the only one.

Sadly, opportunities to demonstrate this have proven hard to come by over the last great many years. The quirks of my working schedule render me unavailable for most weekends, and this lack of dependability makes finding a team a tricky prospect. As a result, memories of clean sheets, penalty saves, and game-winning, gravity-defying goal-line clearances slip ever further into the past. The goalbound rocket that is the passage of time, with its attendant dulling of reflexes and stamina, remains a shot that even the safest pair of hands can’t keep out forever. At 32 I’m not even close to being ‘past it’, but six games of 11-a-side football over the past eight years tells its own tale. I’m coming down the other side of the hill.

So you can imagine my pleasure when a colleague signed me up to play for FC Gatow of Berlin, a team comprised mostly of Ecuadorians, all of whom utterly delightful. Unfazed by my incessant absences, they kept asking and asking until eventually the planets aligned and I found myself playing in their final league game of the season, my second for them in total. The first, four months prior, had been underwhelming. We lost 2-1, and though nobody held me responsible, I felt as though I was to blame. Neither goal was a catastrophic mistake, but every keeper knows when they should’ve done better. I was eager to set the record straight. This would be my last chance to repay the kindness that my teammates had shown me. I was pumped.

Fast forward.

It’s almost half time and we’ve totally dominated. I’ve had practically nothing to do. I’ve touched the ball maybe five times. The other team, whose name I never learned (let’s call them FC Dicksplash) haven’t even had so much as a corner. The only player on their team that seems to be having any effect is the keeper, who has saved everything that has come his way, including an astonishing point-blank stop from a close range volley. The jealous showman in me almost wished I played for a worse team so I could have some similar fun, but Gatow were patient, passing well, holding the ball up, probing, doing everything right. How we’re not 3 or 4 up by now is ludicrous.

You could almost smell it coming.

How To Disappear Completely

FC Dicksplash launch a swift counter attack. Left-mid passes across to the centre forward, who’s barreling through the middle. Upon being confronted by our centre-back, he slides it across to his teammate, who shapes to shoot.

The player is swiftly closed down, and can only manage to squeeze out a tame, slightly dipping, limp fart of a shot. A garden gnome would’ve kept it out.

My positioning is spot on. It’s a simple gather. It’s in my hands … only it’s not.

The ball was travelling with such lethargy, and so straight into my body, that it seemed any kind of contact would’ve halted it. It honestly would’ve been easier to save it. If I’d suddenly and completely lost consciousness at the moment the ball was kicked I would have saved it! And yet with horror I immediately realised that the ball was not, in fact, nestled safely in my midriff, but had somehow, inexplicably, made a daring escape through my arms, under my body, out from between my legs, and was currently making a break for the goal-line at the speed of a drifting continent.

Sadly that was fast enough. I turned, watched helplessly as the ball gently rested against the back of the net like a sleepy toddler falling into mummy’s arms after a long day at the park, and heard the surprised and delighted cheers of the FC Dicksplash forward line. The worst has happened.

Every goalkeeper makes mistakes, and lord knows I’ve made my fair share. A quick look at your bog standard YouTube bloopers compilation will testify that almost all keepers will solemnly pick themselves up, glance accusingly at the pitch, wipe their nose, and, with a thousand mile stare, carry on with the game. At worst they’ll just shout their expletive of choice, pick the ball out of the net, give it a hefty, cathartic wallop downfield, and stand there looking appropriately miffed doing the double teapot. They’re trained to block out the error and carry on.

This was different. This wasn’t your average blunder. I’ve made mistakes before, costly ones, at worse times, in more meaningful fixtures, but none where the mistake itself was so egregiously, bafflingly awful. If a plate of ham sandwiches could’ve done a better job than you, you know this one’s for real. I went f**king mental.

I shouted, I cursed, I smashed the ball into the ground, I cursed some more, I stopped, I picked up my water bottle, unscrewed the top, took a swig, screwed the top back on, and smashed that thing into the floor too. It was pathetic.

Our centre back came over with consoling words; “Hey man, it’s alright, you doing good, we gonna score and win.” He’s a sweetheart. They all are. Which made it so much worse. I’d let them down. All I wanted was to rewind time and fix it. No such luck. You’re stuck in the present, and all of a sudden, with the ball at the other end of the field, all you can do is sit there and think about just how much of a f**king muppet you are.

Medio Tiempo

During half time I sat glumly trying to refocus as the team talk, entirely in Spanish, flew over my head. After the fact your mind races through possible reasons for such a hideous misjudgment. I half-remember an attacker entering my line of sight just as the ball bounced in front of me. Later on I became convinced that one of the low-flying planes landing at nearby Tegel airport was directly overhead as the ball reached me, possibly scrambling my senses. My frazzled mind may have just conjured these out of thin air. The truth is there was no excuse. I just really, really f**kd up.

There were two things that kept me going. 1) We really were beating the sh*t out of them, so surely some goals of our own really would rescue this, and 2) I’ll get a shot at redemption! There’s still time for a miracle save or something that’ll redress the balance. That’s happened before too!

Nope. And nope.

We lost 1-0.

I barely touched the ball again.

One is the Loneliest Number

There’s no lonelier feeling.

As a goalkeeper you’re already a bit of an outsider. Add to that the fact that it was only my second game, I was the only non-Spanish speaker on the team, and the only Englishman on the pitch, and you get the idea. I honoured the goalkeepers code, making sure to go over to the opposing keeper and tell him he was a legend, and slunk to the sidelines to sit with my teammates. I was miserable.

But this is where everything gets better.

These guys get it. Sure they played to win, sure they were disappointed, but in the weekend sunshine they wore smiles. Everyone was cool and sweet. Jokes were being shared already. They switch to English to keep me involved. When I, encouraged by their joviality, dare to contribute to the growing mirth, they all stop, and listen, and laugh heartily at my self-deprecating gags. It’s a Saturday afternoon and we got what we came for: a good game of football. Perspectives were appropriately realigned. Life was already carrying on. Moments later I’m chatting with the centre back. We’re both leaving Berlin soon. He’s off to Madrid. What are you gonna do for beaches? He says he’s gonna befriend someone with a pool. I like this guy.

People who know what really matters make the best company. I will take two lessons from this. Firstly, I need practice. I need to sharpen up and shift my stance when a shot is bouncing in front of me, re-positioning my elbows and covering the gap between my thighs. My reflexes need work. I could do with some drills where an attacker shoots at me through a crowd.

The second is to remember that, whilst it’s important to take pride in one’s work, it’s also important to learn, and let go. Thanks to the lovely people with whom I played, I felt relaxed and almost happy upon returning home. The first thing I did was message my buddies from England to tell them. We had a good laugh. It wasn’t the world cup. I didn’t wanna hide from it. It … was kinda funny, I guess.

I hope I never make another mistake like that again. But if I do, so be it.

It means I’ll be outside playing football.