At last someone has listened to me. (And don't say 'pardon'!)
Blood Red: Has Adam Bodgan just signed away his first-team career?
Does goalkeeper's move to Liverpool pose question over hisambition?
Liverpool's Fabio Borini has a shot saved by Bolton's Adam Bogdan
You have to be mad to go in goal, apparently. What must you be, then, to choose a career as a back-up keeper?
Perhaps Adam Bogdan could shed some light on the issue.
The Hungarian this week agreed to swap the Championship for the Premier League, Bolton Wanderers for
Liverpool. He will move to Anfield as a free agent on July 1.
In doing so, however, he may also have agreed to forfeit his first-team career for a couple of years.
A little harsh, maybe, but then the life of the understudy is a difficult one to understand. Footballers, we are told, “just want to play”. Are goalkeepers different?
Bogdan turns 28 in September. He should, in theory, be entering his peak years He’s a senior international, with Premier League experience on his CV.
Why, then, is he happy to spend next season playing second fiddle, praying for
Simon Mignolet’s form to collapse, or his hamstring to twang?
Bogdan, clearly, will not displace the Belgian as Liverpool’s No 1 any time soon. He may have impressed at Anfield when visiting with Bolton in the FA Cup earlier this year, but don’t let that fool you; he’s been signed to act as Mignolet’s understudy.
Presumably, Liverpool’s thinking is that Bogdan represents a low-cost, low-maintenance squad player. He won’t gobble up huge wages, and he won’t spend his time complaining about a lack of playing time.
Fair enough, some would say. Perhaps those are the qualities needed in a No 2 keeper.
Yet on a wider scale, are these really the kind of characteristics a club like Liverpool should be entertaining?
We deride those outfielders who seem happy to pick up their wages without getting their knees dirty of a weekend.
Jose Enrique and
Fabio Borini, among others, have been targets of Liverpool fans’ ire over the past 12 months. Between them, they started 11 matches for the Reds last season and yet they are still, if their Instagram accounts are to be believed at least, living the life.
Both will, if the club has their way, be moved on this summer. Both will, you would imagine, go on to become a regular elsewhere, posting pictures of victories and triumphs as well as table tennis and nice evening meals.
And yet with goalkeepers, something is different. There are plenty who seem to have spent their entire career in the shadows.
Remember Pegguy Arphexad? He of the tracksuit bottoms and the tendency to try to dribble past centre forwards on the edge of his own penalty areas?
He made his debut in 1990, retired in 2005, and in between do you know how many competitive games he played? Less than a hundred.
Richard Wright, by contrast, had racked up the games as a youngster making his way in the game. Tipped as a future England No 1 when at Ipswich, by the time he left Everton, aged 29, in 2007, he’d made more than 300 league appearances.
And in the eight years since? 68. He’s still contracted to Manchester City, and has been for three years. He hasn’t, though, managed a single minute of competitive action at the Etihad. He’s known within the game as a “training goalie.”
Stuart Taylor is another. He was an England U21 international, good enough to win a Premier League winners’ medal with Arsenal in 2002. But career league appearances? 75. He’s still only 34 years of age
.
What changes in a goalkeeper’s mindset, to allow them to accept, or at least risk, a life in the background?
Some back-up keepers, of course, take their chance. Boaz Myhill at West Brom, for example, shone when brought in due to Ben Foster’s injury.
David Ospina displaced Wojiech Szczesny at Arsenal, as did Costel Pantilimon with Vito Mannone at Sunderland.
Others, though, are left to tread water, to watch key years of their career drift by, while they content themselves with a few cup matches or a brief stint in the team when injuries or suspension strikes. Willy Caballero, Joel Robles, Alex McCarthy; all could be first choice somewhere, if they took the chance.
Surely these players – the likes of Arphexad. Wright, Taylor or Bogdan – did not grow up hoping to one day warm the bench for a big club? Surely their ambitions, their hopes, their dreams, were the same as most other footballers; to work, to play, to succeed?
It would be dangerous to suggest that these players have chosen the simple life in their careers, but that is certainly an assumption that is easy to make.
Bogdan, of course, may go on to prove everybody wrong at Anfield.
More likely, though, is that he settles nicely into the groove
Brad Jones left in the dugout. Harsh, but true.
Strange ones, goalkeepers.