Stock Keeping

The relative serenity of the goalkeeper is one of football's curiosities, and one of its conditions for success. They're a necessary contrast to the game around them in almost every way: while others run, they walk; where ten have the freedom of the pitch, they're caged; the game is called football, but they use their hands.

An almost eerie confidence surrounds even the worst goalkeeper: it has to, or they'd go to pieces. Think about the language that involves them. The opponent shoots at the keeper, all the time, like in a war. We expect them not only to come through the bombardment unscathed but to catch the bullets and throw them back. Their job is to save, like Jesus, and you can do your own joke about crosses here. But a warrior complex and a messiah complex combined? It's no wonder goalkeepers are complicated people.

They're the perfect example for Marcelo Bielsa's famous confidence that, with a team of robots, he would always win: they're the nearest thing football has to androids. No matter what happens, a goalkeeper is programmed to reset and continue: if they're shot at, they stand up again; if they don't save us now, they save us later; if they make a mistake, they erase it from their memory. It's hard to think of Felix Wiedwald as an impenetrable, undefeatable saviour of humankind, but if he hadn't been taken out of the firing line he'd still be there now, like one of those bizarre paintings of a redneck Jesus under enemy machine gun fire.

Once Wiedwald was out of the Leeds team he did the best thing he could, finally revealing how the human in him was feeling: he went right away from the team, spending his Saturday afternoons exploring the Yorkshire countryside with his wife and his dog. Maybe that's where he'd wanted to be all along, but his training wouldn't let him show it.

Gary Sprake used to infuriate his Leeds teammates for the way blame would wash off his shoulders within minutes. John Lukic would go into a trance before matches and not emerge until they were over, when what was done was done. After a mistake, Nigel Martyn would pop to his feet, collect the ball and reorganise his defence, wearing the face of someone pretending to act, or acting to pretend, natural. Nobody wants to see an emotional goalkeeper, although when Bailey Peacock-Farrell's impressions of Grace Jones at her most statuesque spread from his face to his arms and legs he was taking it a little far. But that's part of the job. Sometimes we think goalkeepers don't care, but if they look like they do, they don't look like a goalkeeper anymore.

And so to Kiko Casilla, around whom questions are swirling like corner kicks he'll never catch. What is he thinking? Why doesn't he save anything? And shouldn't we try somebody else?