December 20, 2022 • 35 mins
A lineage of loco Latin American goalkeepers helped transform the role, straying from their nets.
The goalkeeper is a lonesome creature. Or at least, he used to be. In 1912, the FA limited goalkeepers to using their hands inside their boxes. Then a lineage of loco Latin American goalkeepers helped transform the role, straying far from their nets and scoring a bunch of weird, wild goals. Rene Higuita, Jorge Campos, and Jose Luis Chilavert delighted and terrified their own fans in equal measure. Also they wore retina-searing jerseys.
The Best Soccer Podcast In The World is a bilingual podcast that tells your soon-to-be favorite soccer stories. The host, Nando Vila, will crack open some of the most iconic World Cup moments, putting them in cultural and geopolitical contexts. From legendary players to silly hairdos, to heart-wrenching losses.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
The goalkeeper is a lonesome creature. Alone in his box.
He hangs out with his gloves and his crossbar. You
only notice him when he messes up and concedes. He's
got a lot of time to think. The French philosopher
Albert Camu was a goalkeeper. He said, quote, all that
(00:26):
I know most surely about morality and duty I owe
to football. Vladimir Nabokov called his fellow goalkeepers aloof solitary, impassive.
Aside from antisocial writers who would want this thankless job.
Today we're going to look at a lineage of local
(00:51):
Latin American goalkeepers who transformed the role and whose wild,
unhinged antics terrified and delighted their own fans along the way.
I'm namedo Vila, and you're listening to the best soccer
podcast in the world. It's got ses with them, but
(01:14):
it's still Christiano Ronaldo. Yes, yes, in the Italian teams
wonderful that is never sin. In nineteen twelve, the Football
(01:44):
Association limited goalkeepers to using their hands inside of their
own boxes, rather than anywhere in their own halves. Hungarian
Goula Grossage was among the first to come off his
line consistently. He won a gold medal with Hungary at
the nineteen fifty two Summer Epics. A postle socco of
lev Yashin and Mariel Garriso built on the idea of
(02:05):
the sweeper keeper. Leve Yashin saved over a hundred penalties
and had a cigarette and a shot before the game
to get in the right mindset. Legendary Argentina everywhere played stopper.
Gariso was the first to wear gloves. The goalkeeper's role
back then was purely just stop the boy if it
came to him and get it back up the pitch.
(02:25):
If you see clips of these old games from the fifties,
from the sixties, moist keepers that they were linely limbed
themselves to grabbing hold of the ball with two hands,
just taking their time and then launching it back up
the pitch, not really caring who it landed with. And
Carrisso was different. He was a guy who did leave
his line. He would, you know, as the position suggests,
(02:48):
sweep up behind the defense if if it was needed,
he could play with his fate. This is Daniel Edwards,
a soccer journalist based in Buenos Aires. Gariso said a
record for appearances for Riad, played on the famed Lamkina
team and won six domestic titles with his club. He
was the first goalie to trick a striker by faking
an offside call. His birthday became the Day of the Goalkeeper.
(03:10):
In Argentina. His audacity of dribbling out past opposing players
caught on, including with a young Colombian named or As
the coach who discovered and champion the Heat that would
call him a local Heat that was born in a
slum in Median and grew up playing under the floodlights
(03:30):
paid for by Pablo Escobar. He played as a striker
throughout his youth until one day, when the team's goalkeeper
was unavailable, the coach gave eat other gloves. He was
just seemed a reluctant goalkeeper, right. He was a guy
that was so comfortable getting out of his goal and
dribbling out the pitch. And he was a great keeper
and his I'm right, but you must just just seemed
(03:52):
to be bored of the row. So he would he
would just try this out, righteous stuff, and there's a
free kick at Akta to get across very very quickly.
And day he scored seven goals in his debut season,
which earned him a transfer. Fueled by cocaine money, Nasional flourished,
eventually winning the the final went to penalties. He has
(04:17):
stopped four and scored his own as Nacionale became the
first Colombian team to win South America's biggest club competition.
But that team, you know, that Li Nacional team has
just gone into history is one of the greatest South
American club teams that ever was his antics between the
post it definitely announced him as as someone to watch
(04:39):
and side. This guy Francisco Maturan of the culture that
age he comes in around nine nine. He says, look,
we're not going to beat Argentina Brazil by fouling them,
by spoiling. You know, we're Colombians. We love, we love
to have fun. We love to just show you our
three sells. So we're going to do that on the pitch.
We we're talking about it is an orthodox style. I
(05:03):
don't think I've ever seen anything as pure confidential. I mean,
of course, Sita with all of his antics, all of
his all of his free spirit in the girl, that's
where it all started, and it just filtered through the
entire team from there. In his international debut, kept a
clean sheet against the Soviet Union for a hundred and
twenty minutes, saving two penalties in scoring the decisive spot kick.
(05:27):
Just a very colorful figure on and off the pitch
and definitely one of these guys who in the nineties,
which was you know, especially early nineties are fairly bleak
time for football, where a lot of teams weren't really
proposing anything. The game was dubbed by violence, dubbed by
very negative play. It must be the best play on
the fiber show tram. And then you have a team
(05:48):
like Columbia who just came up in the World Cup,
and it was like, well, you can play a bit different,
you can play with a bit of joy in your heart.
This is really good to see. At the time, columb
Ba was thrilling with m bossing games from under his
(06:09):
bouncing blonde fro. Columbia made it to the knockout rounds
of the World Cup, beating the UAE and drawing with
Germany coach. The team was built on Aita's peculiar style
of play. He was and still is kind of kind
of an idol and an icon and representative of not
(06:32):
just you know, Colombia and Colombian soccer, but of a
of a time and an era, you know, in in
a different way. I know, we put them, you know,
like Carlos Falderrama in in a very different way than
Colos walder Rama, but equally as impactful and impressionable, if
you will. This is Alexei Lawless, a defender for the U.
S national team in the nineties and now a puned
(06:53):
it for Fox Soccer. As coach Francisco put it quote,
with Renee acting as a sweeper, we effectively have eleven
outfield players allowed the whole team to push higher up
the field. In Totalita conceded just fifty four goals in
sixty eight games for Columbia, less than one per game.
Was very popular because of his tendency to go out
(07:18):
of his penalty orange dribble rounds four of five or six.
But then the World Cup he famously lost the motto
or in the last sixteen against Cameroon in extra time,
and that's why Columbia went out so spanished. Eventually. This
(07:41):
is Michael Jakin, a freelance soccer journalist. So Cameroon in
the round of sixteen. Let's talk about it, Yeah, it was.
It was pretty much deadlocked. Like a lot of the
games at the ninety nine World Cup was a gat
receives the boat and just besides, as he had done
(08:02):
for so many times, to dribble it out and see
what I can do. And he came up against against
Cameroon and lost the boll and gifted the go to
Roger millib and that was it for Columbia. They couldn't
get back. And one of the most enjoyable teams are
that World Cup when in the Colombian doll is a
(08:22):
keeper who lives on a knife inch. He's an exhibitionist,
a great taker of risks. Millers possessed him the get
and read face Miller another dog and another dogs. Miller's
danced with the corner flag became famous. Heat that called
his turnover quote a mistake as big as a house comb.
(08:43):
That was an outstanding team. That was a team that
could have won the World Cup in ninety four and
maybe and he was the Gita being a bit of
a fool against Cameroon which cost him both goals. This
is a senior writer for ESPN. You know your eye
probably could have scored one of those two goals when
you get when you get gifted them, you know the
way he did, and he was totally out of position
(09:05):
for the other goal as well, which people often forget.
So yeah, I don't. I don't see Gita as this
positive romantic figure. Neither did Colombia. Four years later, he
that wasn't at the nineteen ninety four woke up because
he done. He just got out of prison for reasons
that I think on the Gita would would really be
(09:26):
able to explain. He managed to get caught up in
kidnapping kis in Colombia. Pabloscoad had escaped his mountaintop prison
and was on the run. His bank accounts were frozen.
He needed money, so he went about it the old
fashioned way, kidnapping. He abducted the daughter of his former
partner turned rival Cats Molina. Molina asked to Eat that
(09:46):
to act as an intermediary to transfer the money. He
had some personal link, so he got involved in this
kidnapping chaise. This wasn't eat as brightest moment, but you
try turning down a drug kingpin when he per suddenly
asks for a favor. He that carried the three thousand
dollars in cash handed it over and idly signed autographs
(10:07):
for the street kids who recognized him. While he waited,
the girl was delivered to his side without him seeing
where she appeared from. The victim eventually got home. Cifely
A Gab allegedly received a very has some sum of
money for his involvement, and eventually the Columbian authorities caught
up with him and said, now you're complicit in this kidnapping.
(10:27):
So I spent almost a year I think in prison,
got out just before the World Cup. Obviously he had
n't plied for a year. He was in pretty terrible
shipes I. He was forced to watch from him and
Oscar Corba went in instead as heat that puts it.
He went to jail because he tried to save a
teenage girl. He called his motives humanitarian. He was never
(10:49):
tried and was released after seven months. He sued the
ball at that prison when they tried to cut his hair.
His lawyer argued that his hair was quote essential to
his personality, his performance, in his image, and he's got
lots of it. This is James Richardson hosted the Totally
Football Show. People knew who Renny Agreeto was because of
(11:09):
the hair He had this big kind of you won't
remember the hairbaar bunch. It was a short lived Hannah
Barbera cartoon about somewhere out there, someone's going, yeah, I
know the hair by bunch. Oh, I understand what he
means about. When they agreed his hair. It was that
kind of thing. For that person, you get it, But
for the rest of you, it was kind of like
a big, kind of like bubble perm kind of frieze.
(11:30):
He paired his hair do with extravagant jerseys and huge
puffed up sleeves. Colorful, I guess would be the best
way to describe a flamboyant electric colors on his shirt,
flying hair down to his down to his shoulders, the mustache.
He was only five nine, which is really short for
a goalie. He was also a larger than life character,
(11:53):
and he inhabited that character with you know, just incredible, beautiful,
arrogant in the way that he went about it. With
the Eta regaining fitness at home, Columbia imploded in tried
to down there for you. That's course, Papa, I'm the
(12:15):
own goal. I'm the United States reached Columbia scored an
owned goal, and was later murdered back in Midian a
tragic story for another episode. At the time, Columbia was
mired deep in cartel violence. If you know of theta,
it's for something he did. After that, he gave the
world a different view of Columbia. Wembley Stadium, England versus Columbia.
(12:46):
Have you ever seen anything black in your life from
a cokeeper? But it was terrible, terrible friendly. Remember well,
I really really touched stuff night. Neither of the teams
we're really looking for a goal. And it kind of
goes back to what I was saying before about heat
just all my seeming board of football bord of being
(13:09):
a goalkeeper at times. So he decided to make the
game noteworthy on his on It was a misplaced cross
come shop from Jamie red Nap just flighted into his direction.
He that could easily have catched it, but he decided
to show the world his scorpion kick. It was incredible. Basically,
he jumped forward into a handstand and kicked the ball
(13:31):
with his heels while upside down. The world had never
seen anything like it, which spawns millions of copycats. Everyone
wanted to do the scorpion kick on the playground. I
think even a friend of mine managed to dislocate his
shoulder because he tried it. So I think there was
probably a lot of emergency rooms in England at that
time for kids and pediatricians that weren't very happy with
(13:53):
the guitar. He says it quote put Columbia on the map. Definitely.
He gave a lot of people well to talk about
after that Scorpion kid because Columbia hadn't had a good
World Cup the year before, so that was really the
narrative behind Columbia. Then the Gate comes along and and
just changes the story. You know, He's it's the country
(14:14):
that invented the schoolping kick. It's one of the most
iconic soccer highlights of all time. Your grandma has seen it.
That lived off the fame of the scorpion kick for
the rest of his career. He recreated it in an
ad for Frutino, a drink sort of like kool Aid.
Most of his fifty one career goals came towards the
end of his playing days, when he signed for lower
(14:34):
league clubs, largely as a publicity stunt. In two thousand four,
he tested positive for cocaine, entered rehab, and didn't play
again for three years. In that time, he had plastic
surgery on a reality TV show They Tell Lies, his
nose job, his chin implant, skin Peel Island trim, and liposuction.
He had been voted Columbia's ugliest icon. He said quote,
(14:56):
I'm tired of being ugly, Rena. I want to be handsome. Really.
Afterward he announced that body wise he was perfect. He
played off and on until he was forty four, retiring
in two thousand and ten from a second division team
in Colombian coffee Country. But let's get back to World
Cup for a moment. It was the lowest scoring a
(15:19):
World Cup in history and something had to be done,
so FIFA came up with a new law to help
keep the game moving, the back pass rule. It was
a way just to spade up the game. FIFA knew
that football wasn't a bit of trouble and the back
pass was a huge part of that because you could
waste minutes and minutes on end by giving the ball,
(15:42):
you know, back to the keeper. It was just a
very very ugly, unpleasant tactic that calls the back pass rule.
I does law. After the rule change, goalkeepers now are
expected to do things that Iata pioneered the goalkeepers heads
to play better with our feet, and their role changed
(16:02):
and they became more involved in building the play from behind.
More about what happened next after the break with the
Ether absent for World Cup ninety four, the first World
Cup after the back pass rule was implemented, the role
(16:25):
of fluorescent flamboyant goalkeeper felt at the diminutive Mexican campus.
And to just say, this guy campus come out with
this technical color goalkeeper shirt and just looking so supremely
confident because he always seemed to have this look on
this west side. Yeah, I know what I'm doing. The
whole tel is just gonna follow me and it's uh
(16:45):
and it's going to be fine. We obviously just thought
it was hilarious that this guy was coming out in
a pink and yellow show drawn in a group with
boring Ireland and Italy. Mexican go was a breath of
fresh air, and that minty fresh breath came in the
form of their goalkeeper, Jorge Campos, sparkled as Mexico beat
(17:07):
Ireland and drew with eventual finalists Italy. You know, in
the knockout rounds, Mexico came up against Bulgaria, each team
had a player sent off. In one of the wildest
games of the tournament, it went to penalties. Campos saved
the first, but his teammates managed to miss three in
(17:29):
a row and Mexico crashed house shame put by compos
FIFA listed him as the world's third best goalkeeper before
that World Cup. Two years later, Nike featured him in
their epic Good Versus Evil ad along with all of
the best players in the world, Eric Cantada, Luis Figo,
Ronaldo and Paolo Maldi. He was one of my favorite
(17:51):
goalkeepers because he was very very short. I mean he
was the shortest player of the Mexican team and his
magnificent colorful outfits, and he also loved to dribble. Looks
like a guita. But he was shorter than low Miss.
You know that. It's incredible. Campus is listed at five
ft six, though he disputes that he used to stand
(18:15):
on top of a soccer ball in the back row
of team photos just to appear taller. So just how
tall was he? I mean he would maybe come up
to my nipple. Alexei Lalas played against him many times
over the years, probably and then maybe a little a
little taller with um the hair because at that point,
you know, back then he was really poofing it out
and you know, having it high. So yeah, he got
a couple of extra inches with the hair there. So
(18:37):
not diminutive, I would say, but but certainly not imposing
in terms of his actual height, personality and color and
all that. Now that's a whole another story. Campos was
a surfer, horseback rider, and sometimes goalkeeper from a beach
resort town on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where Campos
grew up on a ranch and spent every weekend in
(18:58):
the waves. He was say a special character as well.
You know, he came from Acapulco. Soften is the most
popular spot, and he was brilliant sofa. The sand taught
me endurance and reflexes, he said. Surfing taught me balance
and elasticity. It also taught him fearlessness. He said that
there was more pressure surfing than in soccer. When you
(19:20):
go surfing, you do have to watch out for sharks,
after all, like Ghita. All throughout his youth career, compos
played as a forward. In fact, in his debut season
in Mexico with Booms. He found his progress to the
first team blocked by an established veteran keeper, so Compos
asked to play as a striker, and he managed to
score fourteen goals, a team high by He was the
(19:46):
starting goalkeeper for both Bomas and Mexico. He won the
Mexican League that year. He spent the majority of his
career in goal, but certainly not all of it. He
famously played both goalkeeper and striker in some games. The
first was for Atlante, his next club. His team was
(20:08):
trailing to Cruizassul, so the coach subbed on the backup
goalkeeper and moved Compos into the attack. He scored the
equalizer his best goal, dustier kick, after launching himself through
the air. Throughout his career, Compos alternated between wearing the
number one and the number nine. One in goal, he'd
(20:28):
wear an outfield jersey underneath his goldie shirt just in case.
Now let's talk about those jerseys. If you know of Compos,
it's because of the uniform. Compos designed them himself, many
and homage to surfer gear in his hometown. They were
Neon da Gelos, psychedelic colored things with a three quarter
sleeve and huge armholes. You're aesthetic and the way that
(20:50):
you looked, and for lack of a better word, your
costume that you wore was important. And he certainly recognized
that he was playing a part, and therefore the costume
that he put on was as important as actually, you know,
the lines that he that he gave and the and
the performance that he gave. This wasn't just something that
he pulled off the top of his head. It was
(21:11):
comfortable for him, but it was strategic, and he understood entertainment.
He understood performance, He understood the stage. He understood the
connection between the audience and the stage and that character
that you were playing, and he, you know, he went
about cultivating. Compos was so tied to this image that
it nearly cost him a spot in the World Cup.
(21:32):
You see, Compos produced his own jerseys. When the Mexican
Federation made a deal with Umbro to supply their uniforms,
Compos refused to wear them. After a standoff, they reached
a compromise. Compos kept designing and producing his own jerseys,
but he would sew the Umbro label on them. Off
the field, he wore sandals and shorts. He inhaled Haganda's
(21:52):
ice cream. Everything about him was unorthodox, especially his style
of play. He would frequently dribble the ball deep into
the opposition half with fearless nonchalance. Sometimes he doesn't get
enough credit for, you know, really being ahead of his time,
fearless when it came to how he played. And I
think in today's game, where we put so much emphasis
(22:14):
on playing out of the back and the ability for
a goalkeeper to be good with their feet, some of
the stuff that defenders and goalkeepers do in today's game
we would never be caught dead doing. And yet Jorge
Kampos was doing that and more at a time when
it wasn't cool or de jure to to kind of
do it. So he was a man ahead of his time.
(22:35):
Compos seemed to revel in the risk he'd make a
save and launched straight up the field. World Cup winning
Argentine coach says he called him quote a prototype of
the twenty one century goalkeeper. Remember this is the nineties.
Goalkeepers are just now figuring out how to deal with
the ball without picking it up. But what people forget
is once a keeper picks up the ball, you know
(22:58):
he's either going to punt it and then comes or
he's going to roll it out to somebody. Compos chose
a third option. We know, it's soccer where it's very
difficult to score, and so more often than not it
ends up with, you know, being in the goalkeeper's hands.
But in that moment when everybody kind of turns around
and adjusts, the goalkeeper actually has the best view of
(23:18):
what is going on. Jorge compos would recognize and then
go about exploiting both the sheer numbers and the practical
overflow of numbers. In that half, it was starting a
counter attack. So it was it was feeding off of
a number of things, the confusion, the lapse in mentality
that normally happens uh, and then the novelty of it.
(23:40):
Compos won Gold Cups with Mexico. Alexei grimly recalls the
ninety three Gold Cup final when his USA team got
thrashed four nil. Particular loss in the Gold Cup final.
You know, I was young. I think that was my
first time playing in a steca and so just the
awe of playing in a s teca and then we
got ours kicked. I mean that's a game where Horkae
(24:02):
just sat in the back, uh, And you know, smoked
a cigarette and drank a coffee, basically because we didn't
We certainly weren't doing anything to challenge him up there,
and we didn't see that, you know, that that marauding
type of ork because it wasn't necessary, and he was smart.
He recognized when it was necessary and when it when
it wasn't. In Major League Soccer made Compost its first
(24:25):
international signing. His face was everywhere TV, commercials, magazines, on
a mural in Hollywood and Vine. His signing bonus was
a new Ferrari. Compost would play doubleheaders Mexico then Galaxy
appearances back to back in the same day in the
same stadium, or he'd play a game in the Mexican League,
jump on a plane and play an MLS twenty four
(24:45):
hours later. Fans on either side of the border adored him.
He was seemingly always moving through a throng of autograph seekers.
The signing was a huge hit. Eventually, Compost was traded
to the Chicago Fire, a new team. In season, he
alternated time with Zach Thornton, a six ft three two
pound American whose father was a tight end for the
(25:06):
University of Kentucky. For the playoffs, coach Bob Bradley went
with Thornton. Compos left the country to play for Bumas
and never returned to MLS. Thornton and the Fire won
the MLS Cup. That will do it a new champion
from Major Rack Soccer their expansion Fire. They throw the
(25:27):
champion the Fire roll Spree. That same year, Compos in
Mexico again exited in the round of sixteen in the
World Cup Germany in front fair half, getting the better
of Laura I'm camp Bos could do nothing again. The
squad became known as the Ya So Close generation. Overall,
(25:49):
he made a hundred and twenty nine appearances for Mexico,
three of them as a striker, and was their biggest
star at the time. He was definitely one of their
He was ahead of his time as far as personal
branding and playing out of the back. But how good
was he really? To be honest, Hardy Compost was an
undersized goalkeeper who was technical and like a lot of
(26:10):
players you know, played a different position as well, and
sometimes enjoyed playing that other position. But it was fundamentally
I thought a gimmick and I talked a lot about
the character that they play. It never overshadowed their ability,
so there was never a question as to whether they
were good soccer players. As a matter of fact, you
can you can argue that they were great soccer players,
but this other part of them, in my view and
(26:32):
my eyes, only made them greater than what they were.
Or as Campos put it, quote, if you look good,
you feel good, and if you feel good, you play good.
More about what happened next after the break. Campos scored
(26:56):
over thirty goals in his career, but next in the
line of local Latin American goalkeepers surpassed them both. That's right,
Luis Felix. He was a behemoth six ft two and
over two hundred pounds, and Chilla Verte is another character entirely.
I think when it came to, uh, you know, stopping
(27:16):
gods on a one on one, there weren't many people
better because he would just come out at you and
put that huge frame right in front and it wasn't
easy to pay him from there. She was frightening goalkeeper
with a bulldog shot, who loves to take a penalties
and three kicks, didn't really play outside of his box.
(27:36):
He scored well over sixty goals in his career. He's
the first goalkeeper to score a hat trick. His first
goal for Paraguay came deep in stoppage time against Colombia.
Our Paliita was in gold. They shared a warm hug afterward.
L Once scored from his own half. I don't know
(27:57):
if you've ever seen the one he scored for from
a half white line. Just an absolutely brilliant effort. Vella
has got a completely innocuous free kick just behind the
half white line. No one could ever imagine anything was
going to come from it. Chilliver comes charging up from
his goal and almost about breaking stride. Let's rip and
(28:18):
the bull flies miles up in the air and falls
just inside the river net. He caught the river keeper
that day completely off guard. Um and it's one that
always shows up even now on our clip shows. She
LeVert started taking free kicks early in his career as
a novelty, and then practice hours, hours and hours after training,
(28:40):
taking eighty to a hundred and twenty free kicks a
day until quote, they gave me the job for real.
In his career, Levet won league titles in Paraguay, Argentina
and Uruguay. He won a league cup in France. FIFA
named him the best goalkeeper in the world three times
in the late nineties, but he was arguably at his
best while on Villas had its field. In his decade there,
(29:02):
she won four league titles in the Internationally, Chile took
Paraguay into the knockout rounds of the World Cup twice,
further than the small nation had ever gone before. Just
water that iv in Chilivert. He had a busy day
and did chilver real lion for Paraguay. He got into
(29:24):
the World Cup for the first time they in years
and years and years, and it's just established himself as
a as a national hero. As he done less. France
knocked him out in on the way to the title
with the first golden Golden World Cup history. So focused
by Chilbert. This baul to flex pampa defender as you'll
see here, can use his quick footwork and a full
extention shut you see here to deflect the ball wide.
(29:46):
One of many tings and eventual finalists. Germany knocked him
out with the late goal in two thousand and two, Louisville,
that's the winner, show me with two minutes to go.
Loisville has quot Germany a culture Finals she have. Its
aim was to become the first goalkeeper to score in
a World Cup, and he came pretty close. Finally, Luis
Chilliver and they're standing in very parts of the stadium
(30:09):
now in anticipation of this. Here's the shot. Say everything
about Chilver was larger than life. Brazil coach Felipisco lad
he said he was loaded down with four fat Yeah,
he was just a bulldog essentially, as he used to
wear on his chest for Velis. He was just such
(30:31):
an intimidating figure, such a huge, huge man to have
behind you. They sold bulldog ch levered t shirts. The
Paraguayan Football League once held the competition to find the
bulldog that looked most like the one on the jersey.
I honestly don't know how he got it. I mean,
the logical answer would be that he looks quite a
lot like a bulldog. He's this huge guy in massive shoulders,
(30:54):
stout neck and big heads. I definitely the physical similarities
of that, and the bulldog just snowed out of his jersey.
I think the best way I could describe it would
be Spike from Tom and Jerry, but even more medicine.
It was definitely in a as we said with Vigita,
he knew what his image was, then he loved to
(31:14):
play up to it. Let it said. I created an
image for me with this face. It was much easier
to play the bad guy. He certainly had the rap
sheet to back it up. He punched Faustino Asparilla in
the nose in a World Cup qualifier. He also picked
up four suspended jail sentences in his life, one for
(31:35):
hitting a ball boy, one for attacking a physio, one
for forging documents in a contract dispute, and one in
a defamation lawsuit. He called the South American Football Confederation
president corrupt. His hardheadedness also came across and his resolute morals.
He insisted that the Paraguay players donate a portion of
(31:55):
the World Cup bonuses to the staff, and he boycotted
Medica because he thought the money used to host it
would be better spent feeding the children. Hold a big
copa America America title. She loved it was a very
different type of player than Agita and campus he didn't
(32:16):
dribble out of the box. Besides his set piece goals.
She his contributions to the attack came in the form
of the South Americans called the big kick. He could
pick out teammates with long punts. Already a decade after
the back pass rule, the role was changing. So that's
what we saw, you know, starting with about in the
nine four World Cup, the guy and did stop to
(32:36):
become more ripen. There was a little bit of an
ive lap I think with keepers, you know, taking time
to learn these new skills that they needed, why as
a result of not being able to pick up the
ball so much. But once they got there, it definitely
changed a game and and it started moving a bit
more quickly Nowadays, Manuel Noyer, Huge, Larie Edison and Allison
(33:00):
could all probably play in midfield. What do you believe
it said the goal keeper has saved you know, football
as a guy in which is always avoved. Teams have
more to gain from the goalkeeper pushing up to join
the other ten than they have to lose from the
times when a goalie gets caught on the ball and
(33:21):
turns it over. That position has evolved. There were times
where that player wasn't being used to effect and was
just kind of sitting back there and waiting to save
the ball, as opposed to adding an additional player that
if he or she is good enough with their feet,
can actually act as you know, that sweeper or that
last line of defense, or that more importantly, the first
(33:43):
line of offense coming out of the back. And so
I think it, while we didn't put a name to
it and we didn't necessarily think about it in those
ways that we do now, that was what was happening.
And I think you need, ultimately goalkeepers who are able
to envision themselves as being more than just shot stoppers,
and more than just your traditional person in and there,
and and that by no way means that shot stopping
(34:04):
and saving the ball shouldn't be your priority, but you
can do so much more. The goalkeeper is a little
less lonesome now. It took a few men of questionable
sanity and the global rule change, but the modern goalkeeper
has finally joined the pack. The Best Soccer Podcast in
(34:25):
the World is a production of Exiled Content Studios in
partnership with My Hearts Michael Podcast Network, and is hosted
by me Nandolvilla, produced by Ana and zach Lee Rigg,
written by Zach Lee Rigg, Production assistance by Stella Emmett.
Our executive producers are Isaac Lee, Rose Reed and myself
named Avila. Our executive producers at I Heart are Gasel
(34:47):
Bancees and ar Lean Santana. Sound designed by Uglo Mendoza
are Awesome. Theme song is by lu j Special thanks
to all the voices who participated in this episode Daniel Edwards,
Alexei Lawless, Michael Jakin, Gabrielle mar Kodi, and James Richardson.
For more podcasts, listen to the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(35:09):
M
The goalkeeper is a lonesome creature. Alone in his box.
He hangs out with his gloves and his crossbar. You
only notice him when he messes up and concedes. He's
got a lot of time to think. The French philosopher
Albert Camu was a goalkeeper. He said, quote, all that
(00:26):
I know most surely about morality and duty I owe
to football. Vladimir Nabokov called his fellow goalkeepers aloof solitary, impassive.
Aside from antisocial writers who would want this thankless job.
Today we're going to look at a lineage of local
(00:51):
Latin American goalkeepers who transformed the role and whose wild,
unhinged antics terrified and delighted their own fans along the way.
I'm namedo Vila, and you're listening to the best soccer
podcast in the world. It's got ses with them, but
(01:14):
it's still Christiano Ronaldo. Yes, yes, in the Italian teams
wonderful that is never sin. In nineteen twelve, the Football
(01:44):
Association limited goalkeepers to using their hands inside of their
own boxes, rather than anywhere in their own halves. Hungarian
Goula Grossage was among the first to come off his
line consistently. He won a gold medal with Hungary at
the nineteen fifty two Summer Epics. A postle socco of
lev Yashin and Mariel Garriso built on the idea of
(02:05):
the sweeper keeper. Leve Yashin saved over a hundred penalties
and had a cigarette and a shot before the game
to get in the right mindset. Legendary Argentina everywhere played stopper.
Gariso was the first to wear gloves. The goalkeeper's role
back then was purely just stop the boy if it
came to him and get it back up the pitch.
(02:25):
If you see clips of these old games from the fifties,
from the sixties, moist keepers that they were linely limbed
themselves to grabbing hold of the ball with two hands,
just taking their time and then launching it back up
the pitch, not really caring who it landed with. And
Carrisso was different. He was a guy who did leave
his line. He would, you know, as the position suggests,
(02:48):
sweep up behind the defense if if it was needed,
he could play with his fate. This is Daniel Edwards,
a soccer journalist based in Buenos Aires. Gariso said a
record for appearances for Riad, played on the famed Lamkina
team and won six domestic titles with his club. He
was the first goalie to trick a striker by faking
an offside call. His birthday became the Day of the Goalkeeper.
(03:10):
In Argentina. His audacity of dribbling out past opposing players
caught on, including with a young Colombian named or As
the coach who discovered and champion the Heat that would
call him a local Heat that was born in a
slum in Median and grew up playing under the floodlights
(03:30):
paid for by Pablo Escobar. He played as a striker
throughout his youth until one day, when the team's goalkeeper
was unavailable, the coach gave eat other gloves. He was
just seemed a reluctant goalkeeper, right. He was a guy
that was so comfortable getting out of his goal and
dribbling out the pitch. And he was a great keeper
and his I'm right, but you must just just seemed
(03:52):
to be bored of the row. So he would he
would just try this out, righteous stuff, and there's a
free kick at Akta to get across very very quickly.
And day he scored seven goals in his debut season,
which earned him a transfer. Fueled by cocaine money, Nasional flourished,
eventually winning the the final went to penalties. He has
(04:17):
stopped four and scored his own as Nacionale became the
first Colombian team to win South America's biggest club competition.
But that team, you know, that Li Nacional team has
just gone into history is one of the greatest South
American club teams that ever was his antics between the
post it definitely announced him as as someone to watch
(04:39):
and side. This guy Francisco Maturan of the culture that
age he comes in around nine nine. He says, look,
we're not going to beat Argentina Brazil by fouling them,
by spoiling. You know, we're Colombians. We love, we love
to have fun. We love to just show you our
three sells. So we're going to do that on the pitch.
We we're talking about it is an orthodox style. I
(05:03):
don't think I've ever seen anything as pure confidential. I mean,
of course, Sita with all of his antics, all of
his all of his free spirit in the girl, that's
where it all started, and it just filtered through the
entire team from there. In his international debut, kept a
clean sheet against the Soviet Union for a hundred and
twenty minutes, saving two penalties in scoring the decisive spot kick.
(05:27):
Just a very colorful figure on and off the pitch
and definitely one of these guys who in the nineties,
which was you know, especially early nineties are fairly bleak
time for football, where a lot of teams weren't really
proposing anything. The game was dubbed by violence, dubbed by
very negative play. It must be the best play on
the fiber show tram. And then you have a team
(05:48):
like Columbia who just came up in the World Cup,
and it was like, well, you can play a bit different,
you can play with a bit of joy in your heart.
This is really good to see. At the time, columb
Ba was thrilling with m bossing games from under his
(06:09):
bouncing blonde fro. Columbia made it to the knockout rounds
of the World Cup, beating the UAE and drawing with
Germany coach. The team was built on Aita's peculiar style
of play. He was and still is kind of kind
of an idol and an icon and representative of not
(06:32):
just you know, Colombia and Colombian soccer, but of a
of a time and an era, you know, in in
a different way. I know, we put them, you know,
like Carlos Falderrama in in a very different way than
Colos walder Rama, but equally as impactful and impressionable, if
you will. This is Alexei Lawless, a defender for the U.
S national team in the nineties and now a puned
(06:53):
it for Fox Soccer. As coach Francisco put it quote,
with Renee acting as a sweeper, we effectively have eleven
outfield players allowed the whole team to push higher up
the field. In Totalita conceded just fifty four goals in
sixty eight games for Columbia, less than one per game.
Was very popular because of his tendency to go out
(07:18):
of his penalty orange dribble rounds four of five or six.
But then the World Cup he famously lost the motto
or in the last sixteen against Cameroon in extra time,
and that's why Columbia went out so spanished. Eventually. This
(07:41):
is Michael Jakin, a freelance soccer journalist. So Cameroon in
the round of sixteen. Let's talk about it, Yeah, it was.
It was pretty much deadlocked. Like a lot of the
games at the ninety nine World Cup was a gat
receives the boat and just besides, as he had done
(08:02):
for so many times, to dribble it out and see
what I can do. And he came up against against
Cameroon and lost the boll and gifted the go to
Roger millib and that was it for Columbia. They couldn't
get back. And one of the most enjoyable teams are
that World Cup when in the Colombian doll is a
(08:22):
keeper who lives on a knife inch. He's an exhibitionist,
a great taker of risks. Millers possessed him the get
and read face Miller another dog and another dogs. Miller's
danced with the corner flag became famous. Heat that called
his turnover quote a mistake as big as a house comb.
(08:43):
That was an outstanding team. That was a team that
could have won the World Cup in ninety four and
maybe and he was the Gita being a bit of
a fool against Cameroon which cost him both goals. This
is a senior writer for ESPN. You know your eye
probably could have scored one of those two goals when
you get when you get gifted them, you know the
way he did, and he was totally out of position
(09:05):
for the other goal as well, which people often forget.
So yeah, I don't. I don't see Gita as this
positive romantic figure. Neither did Colombia. Four years later, he
that wasn't at the nineteen ninety four woke up because
he done. He just got out of prison for reasons
that I think on the Gita would would really be
(09:26):
able to explain. He managed to get caught up in
kidnapping kis in Colombia. Pabloscoad had escaped his mountaintop prison
and was on the run. His bank accounts were frozen.
He needed money, so he went about it the old
fashioned way, kidnapping. He abducted the daughter of his former
partner turned rival Cats Molina. Molina asked to Eat that
(09:46):
to act as an intermediary to transfer the money. He
had some personal link, so he got involved in this
kidnapping chaise. This wasn't eat as brightest moment, but you
try turning down a drug kingpin when he per suddenly
asks for a favor. He that carried the three thousand
dollars in cash handed it over and idly signed autographs
(10:07):
for the street kids who recognized him. While he waited,
the girl was delivered to his side without him seeing
where she appeared from. The victim eventually got home. Cifely
A Gab allegedly received a very has some sum of
money for his involvement, and eventually the Columbian authorities caught
up with him and said, now you're complicit in this kidnapping.
(10:27):
So I spent almost a year I think in prison,
got out just before the World Cup. Obviously he had
n't plied for a year. He was in pretty terrible
shipes I. He was forced to watch from him and
Oscar Corba went in instead as heat that puts it.
He went to jail because he tried to save a
teenage girl. He called his motives humanitarian. He was never
(10:49):
tried and was released after seven months. He sued the
ball at that prison when they tried to cut his hair.
His lawyer argued that his hair was quote essential to
his personality, his performance, in his image, and he's got
lots of it. This is James Richardson hosted the Totally
Football Show. People knew who Renny Agreeto was because of
(11:09):
the hair He had this big kind of you won't
remember the hairbaar bunch. It was a short lived Hannah
Barbera cartoon about somewhere out there, someone's going, yeah, I
know the hair by bunch. Oh, I understand what he
means about. When they agreed his hair. It was that
kind of thing. For that person, you get it, But
for the rest of you, it was kind of like
a big, kind of like bubble perm kind of frieze.
(11:30):
He paired his hair do with extravagant jerseys and huge
puffed up sleeves. Colorful, I guess would be the best
way to describe a flamboyant electric colors on his shirt,
flying hair down to his down to his shoulders, the mustache.
He was only five nine, which is really short for
a goalie. He was also a larger than life character,
(11:53):
and he inhabited that character with you know, just incredible, beautiful,
arrogant in the way that he went about it. With
the Eta regaining fitness at home, Columbia imploded in tried
to down there for you. That's course, Papa, I'm the
(12:15):
own goal. I'm the United States reached Columbia scored an
owned goal, and was later murdered back in Midian a
tragic story for another episode. At the time, Columbia was
mired deep in cartel violence. If you know of theta,
it's for something he did. After that, he gave the
world a different view of Columbia. Wembley Stadium, England versus Columbia.
(12:46):
Have you ever seen anything black in your life from
a cokeeper? But it was terrible, terrible friendly. Remember well,
I really really touched stuff night. Neither of the teams
we're really looking for a goal. And it kind of
goes back to what I was saying before about heat
just all my seeming board of football bord of being
(13:09):
a goalkeeper at times. So he decided to make the
game noteworthy on his on It was a misplaced cross
come shop from Jamie red Nap just flighted into his direction.
He that could easily have catched it, but he decided
to show the world his scorpion kick. It was incredible. Basically,
he jumped forward into a handstand and kicked the ball
(13:31):
with his heels while upside down. The world had never
seen anything like it, which spawns millions of copycats. Everyone
wanted to do the scorpion kick on the playground. I
think even a friend of mine managed to dislocate his
shoulder because he tried it. So I think there was
probably a lot of emergency rooms in England at that
time for kids and pediatricians that weren't very happy with
(13:53):
the guitar. He says it quote put Columbia on the map. Definitely.
He gave a lot of people well to talk about
after that Scorpion kid because Columbia hadn't had a good
World Cup the year before, so that was really the
narrative behind Columbia. Then the Gate comes along and and
just changes the story. You know, He's it's the country
(14:14):
that invented the schoolping kick. It's one of the most
iconic soccer highlights of all time. Your grandma has seen it.
That lived off the fame of the scorpion kick for
the rest of his career. He recreated it in an
ad for Frutino, a drink sort of like kool Aid.
Most of his fifty one career goals came towards the
end of his playing days, when he signed for lower
(14:34):
league clubs, largely as a publicity stunt. In two thousand four,
he tested positive for cocaine, entered rehab, and didn't play
again for three years. In that time, he had plastic
surgery on a reality TV show They Tell Lies, his
nose job, his chin implant, skin Peel Island trim, and liposuction.
He had been voted Columbia's ugliest icon. He said quote,
(14:56):
I'm tired of being ugly, Rena. I want to be handsome. Really.
Afterward he announced that body wise he was perfect. He
played off and on until he was forty four, retiring
in two thousand and ten from a second division team
in Colombian coffee Country. But let's get back to World
Cup for a moment. It was the lowest scoring a
(15:19):
World Cup in history and something had to be done,
so FIFA came up with a new law to help
keep the game moving, the back pass rule. It was
a way just to spade up the game. FIFA knew
that football wasn't a bit of trouble and the back
pass was a huge part of that because you could
waste minutes and minutes on end by giving the ball,
(15:42):
you know, back to the keeper. It was just a
very very ugly, unpleasant tactic that calls the back pass rule.
I does law. After the rule change, goalkeepers now are
expected to do things that Iata pioneered the goalkeepers heads
to play better with our feet, and their role changed
(16:02):
and they became more involved in building the play from behind.
More about what happened next after the break with the
Ether absent for World Cup ninety four, the first World
Cup after the back pass rule was implemented, the role
(16:25):
of fluorescent flamboyant goalkeeper felt at the diminutive Mexican campus.
And to just say, this guy campus come out with
this technical color goalkeeper shirt and just looking so supremely
confident because he always seemed to have this look on
this west side. Yeah, I know what I'm doing. The
whole tel is just gonna follow me and it's uh
(16:45):
and it's going to be fine. We obviously just thought
it was hilarious that this guy was coming out in
a pink and yellow show drawn in a group with
boring Ireland and Italy. Mexican go was a breath of
fresh air, and that minty fresh breath came in the
form of their goalkeeper, Jorge Campos, sparkled as Mexico beat
(17:07):
Ireland and drew with eventual finalists Italy. You know, in
the knockout rounds, Mexico came up against Bulgaria, each team
had a player sent off. In one of the wildest
games of the tournament, it went to penalties. Campos saved
the first, but his teammates managed to miss three in
(17:29):
a row and Mexico crashed house shame put by compos
FIFA listed him as the world's third best goalkeeper before
that World Cup. Two years later, Nike featured him in
their epic Good Versus Evil ad along with all of
the best players in the world, Eric Cantada, Luis Figo,
Ronaldo and Paolo Maldi. He was one of my favorite
(17:51):
goalkeepers because he was very very short. I mean he
was the shortest player of the Mexican team and his
magnificent colorful outfits, and he also loved to dribble. Looks
like a guita. But he was shorter than low Miss.
You know that. It's incredible. Campus is listed at five
ft six, though he disputes that he used to stand
(18:15):
on top of a soccer ball in the back row
of team photos just to appear taller. So just how
tall was he? I mean he would maybe come up
to my nipple. Alexei Lalas played against him many times
over the years, probably and then maybe a little a
little taller with um the hair because at that point,
you know, back then he was really poofing it out
and you know, having it high. So yeah, he got
a couple of extra inches with the hair there. So
(18:37):
not diminutive, I would say, but but certainly not imposing
in terms of his actual height, personality and color and
all that. Now that's a whole another story. Campos was
a surfer, horseback rider, and sometimes goalkeeper from a beach
resort town on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where Campos
grew up on a ranch and spent every weekend in
(18:58):
the waves. He was say a special character as well.
You know, he came from Acapulco. Soften is the most
popular spot, and he was brilliant sofa. The sand taught
me endurance and reflexes, he said. Surfing taught me balance
and elasticity. It also taught him fearlessness. He said that
there was more pressure surfing than in soccer. When you
(19:20):
go surfing, you do have to watch out for sharks,
after all, like Ghita. All throughout his youth career, compos
played as a forward. In fact, in his debut season
in Mexico with Booms. He found his progress to the
first team blocked by an established veteran keeper, so Compos
asked to play as a striker, and he managed to
score fourteen goals, a team high by He was the
(19:46):
starting goalkeeper for both Bomas and Mexico. He won the
Mexican League that year. He spent the majority of his
career in goal, but certainly not all of it. He
famously played both goalkeeper and striker in some games. The
first was for Atlante, his next club. His team was
(20:08):
trailing to Cruizassul, so the coach subbed on the backup
goalkeeper and moved Compos into the attack. He scored the
equalizer his best goal, dustier kick, after launching himself through
the air. Throughout his career, Compos alternated between wearing the
number one and the number nine. One in goal, he'd
(20:28):
wear an outfield jersey underneath his goldie shirt just in case.
Now let's talk about those jerseys. If you know of Compos,
it's because of the uniform. Compos designed them himself, many
and homage to surfer gear in his hometown. They were
Neon da Gelos, psychedelic colored things with a three quarter
sleeve and huge armholes. You're aesthetic and the way that
(20:50):
you looked, and for lack of a better word, your
costume that you wore was important. And he certainly recognized
that he was playing a part, and therefore the costume
that he put on was as important as actually, you know,
the lines that he that he gave and the and
the performance that he gave. This wasn't just something that
he pulled off the top of his head. It was
(21:11):
comfortable for him, but it was strategic, and he understood entertainment.
He understood performance, He understood the stage. He understood the
connection between the audience and the stage and that character
that you were playing, and he, you know, he went
about cultivating. Compos was so tied to this image that
it nearly cost him a spot in the World Cup.
(21:32):
You see, Compos produced his own jerseys. When the Mexican
Federation made a deal with Umbro to supply their uniforms,
Compos refused to wear them. After a standoff, they reached
a compromise. Compos kept designing and producing his own jerseys,
but he would sew the Umbro label on them. Off
the field, he wore sandals and shorts. He inhaled Haganda's
(21:52):
ice cream. Everything about him was unorthodox, especially his style
of play. He would frequently dribble the ball deep into
the opposition half with fearless nonchalance. Sometimes he doesn't get
enough credit for, you know, really being ahead of his time,
fearless when it came to how he played. And I
think in today's game, where we put so much emphasis
(22:14):
on playing out of the back and the ability for
a goalkeeper to be good with their feet, some of
the stuff that defenders and goalkeepers do in today's game
we would never be caught dead doing. And yet Jorge
Kampos was doing that and more at a time when
it wasn't cool or de jure to to kind of
do it. So he was a man ahead of his time.
(22:35):
Compos seemed to revel in the risk he'd make a
save and launched straight up the field. World Cup winning
Argentine coach says he called him quote a prototype of
the twenty one century goalkeeper. Remember this is the nineties.
Goalkeepers are just now figuring out how to deal with
the ball without picking it up. But what people forget
is once a keeper picks up the ball, you know
(22:58):
he's either going to punt it and then comes or
he's going to roll it out to somebody. Compos chose
a third option. We know, it's soccer where it's very
difficult to score, and so more often than not it
ends up with, you know, being in the goalkeeper's hands.
But in that moment when everybody kind of turns around
and adjusts, the goalkeeper actually has the best view of
(23:18):
what is going on. Jorge compos would recognize and then
go about exploiting both the sheer numbers and the practical
overflow of numbers. In that half, it was starting a
counter attack. So it was it was feeding off of
a number of things, the confusion, the lapse in mentality
that normally happens uh, and then the novelty of it.
(23:40):
Compos won Gold Cups with Mexico. Alexei grimly recalls the
ninety three Gold Cup final when his USA team got
thrashed four nil. Particular loss in the Gold Cup final.
You know, I was young. I think that was my
first time playing in a steca and so just the
awe of playing in a s teca and then we
got ours kicked. I mean that's a game where Horkae
(24:02):
just sat in the back, uh, And you know, smoked
a cigarette and drank a coffee, basically because we didn't
We certainly weren't doing anything to challenge him up there,
and we didn't see that, you know, that that marauding
type of ork because it wasn't necessary, and he was smart.
He recognized when it was necessary and when it when
it wasn't. In Major League Soccer made Compost its first
(24:25):
international signing. His face was everywhere TV, commercials, magazines, on
a mural in Hollywood and Vine. His signing bonus was
a new Ferrari. Compost would play doubleheaders Mexico then Galaxy
appearances back to back in the same day in the
same stadium, or he'd play a game in the Mexican League,
jump on a plane and play an MLS twenty four
(24:45):
hours later. Fans on either side of the border adored him.
He was seemingly always moving through a throng of autograph seekers.
The signing was a huge hit. Eventually, Compost was traded
to the Chicago Fire, a new team. In season, he
alternated time with Zach Thornton, a six ft three two
pound American whose father was a tight end for the
(25:06):
University of Kentucky. For the playoffs, coach Bob Bradley went
with Thornton. Compos left the country to play for Bumas
and never returned to MLS. Thornton and the Fire won
the MLS Cup. That will do it a new champion
from Major Rack Soccer their expansion Fire. They throw the
(25:27):
champion the Fire roll Spree. That same year, Compos in
Mexico again exited in the round of sixteen in the
World Cup Germany in front fair half, getting the better
of Laura I'm camp Bos could do nothing again. The
squad became known as the Ya So Close generation. Overall,
(25:49):
he made a hundred and twenty nine appearances for Mexico,
three of them as a striker, and was their biggest
star at the time. He was definitely one of their
He was ahead of his time as far as personal
branding and playing out of the back. But how good
was he really? To be honest, Hardy Compost was an
undersized goalkeeper who was technical and like a lot of
(26:10):
players you know, played a different position as well, and
sometimes enjoyed playing that other position. But it was fundamentally
I thought a gimmick and I talked a lot about
the character that they play. It never overshadowed their ability,
so there was never a question as to whether they
were good soccer players. As a matter of fact, you
can you can argue that they were great soccer players,
but this other part of them, in my view and
(26:32):
my eyes, only made them greater than what they were.
Or as Campos put it, quote, if you look good,
you feel good, and if you feel good, you play good.
More about what happened next after the break. Campos scored
(26:56):
over thirty goals in his career, but next in the
line of local Latin American goalkeepers surpassed them both. That's right,
Luis Felix. He was a behemoth six ft two and
over two hundred pounds, and Chilla Verte is another character entirely.
I think when it came to, uh, you know, stopping
(27:16):
gods on a one on one, there weren't many people
better because he would just come out at you and
put that huge frame right in front and it wasn't
easy to pay him from there. She was frightening goalkeeper
with a bulldog shot, who loves to take a penalties
and three kicks, didn't really play outside of his box.
(27:36):
He scored well over sixty goals in his career. He's
the first goalkeeper to score a hat trick. His first
goal for Paraguay came deep in stoppage time against Colombia.
Our Paliita was in gold. They shared a warm hug afterward.
L Once scored from his own half. I don't know
(27:57):
if you've ever seen the one he scored for from
a half white line. Just an absolutely brilliant effort. Vella
has got a completely innocuous free kick just behind the
half white line. No one could ever imagine anything was
going to come from it. Chilliver comes charging up from
his goal and almost about breaking stride. Let's rip and
(28:18):
the bull flies miles up in the air and falls
just inside the river net. He caught the river keeper
that day completely off guard. Um and it's one that
always shows up even now on our clip shows. She
LeVert started taking free kicks early in his career as
a novelty, and then practice hours, hours and hours after training,
(28:40):
taking eighty to a hundred and twenty free kicks a
day until quote, they gave me the job for real.
In his career, Levet won league titles in Paraguay, Argentina
and Uruguay. He won a league cup in France. FIFA
named him the best goalkeeper in the world three times
in the late nineties, but he was arguably at his
best while on Villas had its field. In his decade there,
(29:02):
she won four league titles in the Internationally, Chile took
Paraguay into the knockout rounds of the World Cup twice,
further than the small nation had ever gone before. Just
water that iv in Chilivert. He had a busy day
and did chilver real lion for Paraguay. He got into
(29:24):
the World Cup for the first time they in years
and years and years, and it's just established himself as
a as a national hero. As he done less. France
knocked him out in on the way to the title
with the first golden Golden World Cup history. So focused
by Chilbert. This baul to flex pampa defender as you'll
see here, can use his quick footwork and a full
extention shut you see here to deflect the ball wide.
(29:46):
One of many tings and eventual finalists. Germany knocked him
out with the late goal in two thousand and two, Louisville,
that's the winner, show me with two minutes to go.
Loisville has quot Germany a culture Finals she have. Its
aim was to become the first goalkeeper to score in
a World Cup, and he came pretty close. Finally, Luis
Chilliver and they're standing in very parts of the stadium
(30:09):
now in anticipation of this. Here's the shot. Say everything
about Chilver was larger than life. Brazil coach Felipisco lad
he said he was loaded down with four fat Yeah,
he was just a bulldog essentially, as he used to
wear on his chest for Velis. He was just such
(30:31):
an intimidating figure, such a huge, huge man to have
behind you. They sold bulldog ch levered t shirts. The
Paraguayan Football League once held the competition to find the
bulldog that looked most like the one on the jersey.
I honestly don't know how he got it. I mean,
the logical answer would be that he looks quite a
lot like a bulldog. He's this huge guy in massive shoulders,
(30:54):
stout neck and big heads. I definitely the physical similarities
of that, and the bulldog just snowed out of his jersey.
I think the best way I could describe it would
be Spike from Tom and Jerry, but even more medicine.
It was definitely in a as we said with Vigita,
he knew what his image was, then he loved to
(31:14):
play up to it. Let it said. I created an
image for me with this face. It was much easier
to play the bad guy. He certainly had the rap
sheet to back it up. He punched Faustino Asparilla in
the nose in a World Cup qualifier. He also picked
up four suspended jail sentences in his life, one for
(31:35):
hitting a ball boy, one for attacking a physio, one
for forging documents in a contract dispute, and one in
a defamation lawsuit. He called the South American Football Confederation
president corrupt. His hardheadedness also came across and his resolute morals.
He insisted that the Paraguay players donate a portion of
(31:55):
the World Cup bonuses to the staff, and he boycotted
Medica because he thought the money used to host it
would be better spent feeding the children. Hold a big
copa America America title. She loved it was a very
different type of player than Agita and campus he didn't
(32:16):
dribble out of the box. Besides his set piece goals.
She his contributions to the attack came in the form
of the South Americans called the big kick. He could
pick out teammates with long punts. Already a decade after
the back pass rule, the role was changing. So that's
what we saw, you know, starting with about in the
nine four World Cup, the guy and did stop to
(32:36):
become more ripen. There was a little bit of an
ive lap I think with keepers, you know, taking time
to learn these new skills that they needed, why as
a result of not being able to pick up the
ball so much. But once they got there, it definitely
changed a game and and it started moving a bit
more quickly Nowadays, Manuel Noyer, Huge, Larie Edison and Allison
(33:00):
could all probably play in midfield. What do you believe
it said the goal keeper has saved you know, football
as a guy in which is always avoved. Teams have
more to gain from the goalkeeper pushing up to join
the other ten than they have to lose from the
times when a goalie gets caught on the ball and
(33:21):
turns it over. That position has evolved. There were times
where that player wasn't being used to effect and was
just kind of sitting back there and waiting to save
the ball, as opposed to adding an additional player that
if he or she is good enough with their feet,
can actually act as you know, that sweeper or that
last line of defense, or that more importantly, the first
(33:43):
line of offense coming out of the back. And so
I think it, while we didn't put a name to
it and we didn't necessarily think about it in those
ways that we do now, that was what was happening.
And I think you need, ultimately goalkeepers who are able
to envision themselves as being more than just shot stoppers,
and more than just your traditional person in and there,
and and that by no way means that shot stopping
(34:04):
and saving the ball shouldn't be your priority, but you
can do so much more. The goalkeeper is a little
less lonesome now. It took a few men of questionable
sanity and the global rule change, but the modern goalkeeper
has finally joined the pack. The Best Soccer Podcast in
(34:25):
the World is a production of Exiled Content Studios in
partnership with My Hearts Michael Podcast Network, and is hosted
by me Nandolvilla, produced by Ana and zach Lee Rigg,
written by Zach Lee Rigg, Production assistance by Stella Emmett.
Our executive producers are Isaac Lee, Rose Reed and myself
named Avila. Our executive producers at I Heart are Gasel
(34:47):
Bancees and ar Lean Santana. Sound designed by Uglo Mendoza
are Awesome. Theme song is by lu j Special thanks
to all the voices who participated in this episode Daniel Edwards,
Alexei Lawless, Michael Jakin, Gabrielle mar Kodi, and James Richardson.
For more podcasts, listen to the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(35:09):
M
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