Cort McMurray gets to grips with what it must really be like out there on the pitch all on your own, with everyone staring at you, with people waiting for you to drop a clanger....
Nothing is worse than being a goalkeeper.
TS Eliot writes, “What is Hell?
Hell is
oneself.
Hell is alone, the other people in it merely projections.”
TS Eliot understood goalkeepers.
In every way, the keeper is kept
in a grassy rectangular Hell: he spends most of every match alone, watching
while other men sweat and struggle and strive, his heartbeat rising with each
thundering foray past midfield, and falling as the anticipated onslaught
fizzles. In a maddening instant, he is In The Thick of It, expected to contort
himself at impossible angles, with superhuman speed, not so much to ensure
Victory, as to forestall Defeat. When he fails and the ball ends in his
net, it’s the goalkeeper on his back, or face down in the mud, or tangled up in
the netting like some unfortunate sea turtle, silently watching the victors
cavort like Jacobins at a guillotining. His teammates abandon him,
drifting toward midfield, heads down, hands on hips, where they practice
looking solemn and silently plot marketing strategy for the launch of their new
line of men's casual fashions.
The goalkeeper is a stranger, an Other. He
doesn’t even wear the uniform of his teammates, dressing instead in some garish
contrasting color that makes him stick out like a poisonous South African tree
frog, the bright markings telling the rest of the world, “Stay back. You
don’t want any part of this.”
It is no way to live. We are born to be
free, to run, to kick, to score, and if not to score, to feel the deeply
satisfying whoosh of air and the low, almost reverent murmur of the crowd as we
put a well-placed shoulder to some high flyer’s chest, leaving him flattened
and twitching. There is something deep within us that yearns for the
approbation of the throngs upon the terraces. We want their admiration,
or at least their fear. We want run to the stands, arms outstretched in
blessing and expiation, and feel the adoration, to know a little of what it’s
like to be Omnipotent. Gods are creators and destroyers; they aren’t deflectors.
Strikers are gods. Remorseless holding
midfielders are no worse than Avenging Angels, terrifying and awe-inspiring.
Keepers are more accountants or air traffic controllers, one lapse in
judgment away from ruining everything.
So if your dreams are haunted by the sight of
poor Joe Hart, a helpless half-mile out of position as snakebit Fernando Torres
for once had something go his way, if you feel the sick burbling at the back of
your throat remembering Mr. Mourinho, working the Stamford Bridge crowd like Eva
Peron on an sugar high, buck up. It’s a long season. Norwich is
coming. Our Joe will crawl back down into that maddening solitary pit,
and he will stretch and bend and do something more amazing than our dulled
brains can process, saving the day so we can cheer Kun or David or Edin for
leading us to triumph.
Or he could drag us all to Hell with him.
This is City, after all…
You can follow Cort on Twitter here
How apt this is. I write as a failed schoolboy 2nd XI goalkeeper, with short sight to boot!
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