UEFA Women's Euros #2: Oh to be a ... keeper?

As a football fan, I often pride myself in being able to spot Premiership footballers even when they are out in the wild, walking among mere mortals like you and me. But this one year, during the pre-Covidian times where I was almost a regular at the Hawthorns, I spotted a player coming out onto the field to warm up, and didn’t recognise him despite him being in the same warm-up kit as everyone else. I asked my friend, “Who’s that?” “Oh, that’s (Boaz) Myhill,” he said, “the Albion’s reserve keeper. Second goalies can be quite anonymous, can’t they?”

Arsenal Women’s first goalkeeper, Manuela Zinsberger, defending a set piece. (Arsenal vs Birmingham, 6 March 2022)
Pic by author

I often think of that moment when I look at the subs bench these days: the two players suited and booted, but destined to probably never play except in rare exceptions. As someone who has never played this position in football, I have no idea what it feels like to be a reserve goalie - I can only observe. I see that they wait on the bench game in game out, season in season out. They patiently sit, willing the team to win because this is what the game is about: T-E-A-M. But as an athlete, undeniably there has to be a desire to be out there on the pitch, to strut your stuff, to play your game - the game you have put in countless hours training for over the years. What does it feel like to know that for you, that chance can only come if something bad happens to a teammate?

Which is what happened to Daphne van Domselaar, now the starting Netherlands goalkeeper in the Women’s Euros 2022. While highly rated in the Vrouwen Eredivisie, we have not had the opportunity to really see her on the international stage. The prowess of Sari van Venendaal has been legendary over the years, and it took an unfortunate shoulder injury to her for van Domselaar to even get a look in.

And get a look in we did - she is having a monumental tournament and one of the more breakout goalkeeping talents this year. Sure, others like Manuela Zinsberger, Mary Earps and Pauline Peyraud-Magnin are doing well, but they were known entities to fans before the tournament began. van Domselaar was only included in the squad only been included in the squad ‘for learning experience’. Before the Euros, she had one cap to her name, but in the Quarter Finals, she will start as numero uno as the Netherlands play France in what she describes as possibly the game of her life so far.

Daphne van Domselaar of the Netherlands, vs. Switzerland, Womens Euros 2022 Group Stage 17 July 2022
Pic by author

To be fair, second - and third - goalkeepers are part of the tournament squad not really expecting to play. As van Domselaar herself said in an interview with UEFA.com, she saw her role as helping the first goalkeeper prepare - to ‘get ready for the game and feel good’. Other non-starters on the squad arguably play a similar role, but for outfield players, in-game substitutions are common. Even if you’re the last one picked on the roster, the likelihood of you making it onto the pitch is greater than that of the substitute goalies.

Tactically, coaches rarely substitute goalkeepers barring injury or when forced to due to a sending off, although I have seen it happen even at the highest level of the game. You do see a goalkeeper being brought in as penalty specialists from time to time especially in the knock-out stages of a tournament. Louis Van Gaal’s subbing in of Tim Krul at the 2014 World Cup is an international knock-out tournament example.

Sometimes teams over-rely on one goalkeeper, without proper development or succession planning. The US Women’s National Team experience of having to find a replacement for Hope Solo after having to fire her is an example. Goalkeepers tend to last longer in the game. Many play into their late 30s and early 40s, and if a coach is wedded to a perceived safe pair of hands, the reserve goalkeepers will likely rarely get a look in.

This doesn’t stop them from preparing. There seems to be a mindset prevalent among reserve goalies that they are there both as a potential cast member but also the supporting act. In a 2019 interview with Adrianna Franch of the US Women’s National team, she outlined the need to “train as if you’re going to play - but also be supportive to the player that is going to play”. The much heralded goalkeeper’s union is perhaps part of this mindset and the mental toughness that is needed.

Not a real ‘union’ in a player’s association sense, the goalkeeper’s union refers to the unspoken code between the players who play a unique role in the game: one that is not often well understood by others. Often you would see a hat tip even between goalkeepers of opposing teams; a bro/sis code of respect. One incident involving then-Everton goalkeeper, Tim Howard, comes to mind: in 2012, playing against Bolton, Howard scored from a goal-line clearance - but he refused to celebrate because he knew that the wind-assisted goal was cruel to the opposing goalkeeper. It takes one to know one: and I cannot profess to know more, having never had this role.

David Goldblatt in his epic work “The Ball Is Round” once said that there is a special place for the goalkeeper: “the loner, the idiosyncratic and the odd-one-out”. Perhaps it is this unique nature, this eccentricity, that allows them to be more at peace with this. By the nature of the game, they are the ones that can do what others cannot; they are the ones with special dispensation, to pick up the ball in a game where the very act defies the aim; the ‘except’ clause. They are special.

Idioscyncracies aside, goalkeepers today no longer are there to just stop the ball from going in, or to become unlikely heroes (or villains) at penalty shootouts. Today they are an important part of the attacking gameplay. The ball-playing goalkeeper is a much more common feature, and offensive moves played out from the back often involves that crucial bit of decision making from the player between the sticks.

Understanding what a goalkeeper does from the back is crucial in knowing how to score, too - as goalscorer Alexandra Popp intimated in a post-game interview after Germany beat Austria 2-0 in the Women’s Euros Quarter Final. Popp spoke of the German goalkeeping coach spotting the fact that Zinsberger doesn’t always focus on the side away from the ball - and as Zinsberger played the ball out, Popp jumped from that opposite side and scored.

I wonder if the second goalkeeper, sitting on the bench, sees these things too and contemplate if they’d do anything differently. Do they play a game of what-ifs? Because for the most part this is all they can do. It reminds me again of Boaz Myhill at West Bromwich Albion. After warming up, he comes on, says hello to a few people in the front row and sits there for 90 minutes.

Just watching, just a spectator, just a bystander: just the reserve goalkeeper.