“Despair”: When a U.S. goalkeeper scored in the Premier League - but delight turned to devastation

It is, surely, a shoo-in on any soccer fan’s list of the Things You Love to See. With seconds left on the clock, in desperate need of a goal, the manager gives the goalkeeper the signal: get yourself into the opposition penalty box, we’re going to hoof one last dead ball into the mixer.

“You can create a little bit of havoc”

Sending the keeper up for a set piece is, arguably, soccer’s answer to American football’s ‘Hail Mary’ pass: Sling the ball into the danger area, and hope. Hope that the presence of your net-minder-turned-attacker, an unplanned-for threat who likely towers over everyone else, sows crucial chaos into your opponent’s defense.

“When a goalkeeper goes up, you can create a little bit of havoc, that’s what you’re trying to do,” agrees Brad Friedel, a former Premier League custodian and U.S. international, in an interview for Matchday Memories. “An extra body, usually a taller body, in the box.”

In no small measure, it is this chaos factor that makes the spectacle of the keeper-in-nosebleed-territory so entertaining - for the neutral observer, at any rate.

When I think about the ploy’s potential to provoke defensive anarchy, my mind always turns back to the Champions League final in 1999. With Manchester United a goal down to Bayern Munich and stoppage time underway, forward went the Red Devils’ goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel, for a last-ditch United corner. Clearly flummoxed by the hulking Dane’s sudden arrival in their area, Bayern comprehensively failed to deal with Schmeichel.

Attracting several defenders, he it was who initially connected with David Beckham’s delivery, before a panic-stricken Bayern clearance was swiped straight to Ryan Giggs. Giggs turned it back into the six-yard box, where Teddy Sheringham was waiting, among a melée of bodies, to sweep home the equalizer.

Memorable as Schmeichel’s Camp Nou forward foray was, though, it does not tick every box. For maximum points, it is the goalkeeper who must put the ball in the net - ideally, as we saw from Benfica’s Anatoliy Trubin last month, with the kind of killer-instinct finish that suggests they should ditch the gloves immediately.

Schmeichel was in fact a pretty proficient marksman, applying a Trubin-esque final touch on numerous occasions. Indeed, when he became the first keeper to score a Premier League goal, firing in a ferocious volley after going up for an Aston Villa corner at Everton in 2001, he took his career tally into double figures.

Three seasons on, Friedel then emulated Schmeichel’s set-piece sharp-shooting to become the Premier League’s second goalscoring custodian, in a Blackburn Rovers clash with Charlton Athletic that took place 22 years ago today.

Unlike Schmeichel, the American had never previously found the net, and would not do so again. It should, therefore, rank among the highlights of a career that yielded a U.S.-record 450 appearances across nearly two decades in the Premier League. However, when asked for the one word that sums up his memories of Feb. 21, 2004, Friedel told Matchday Memories: “Despair.”

And, given the way events unfolded at the Valley, his despondency is understandable.

“From euphoria to just absolute devastation”

Languishing in the bottom half of the table under manager Graeme Souness, Blackburn were on a run of just one top-flight win in six when they visited a Charlton team heading for its highest ever finish - seventh - in the Premier League era. The better team duly raced into a 2-0 lead, taking advantage of laughably lax Blackburn defending to create goals for Carlton Cole and Jason Euell.

“The Valley was a hard place to play,” Friedel recalls. “Charlton had good teams - difficult to play against. We went two down early, and were really just taking a hammering in the first half. Graeme Souness had some words at half time. He’s a smart man; he would know how to push people’s buttons, that’s for sure. So whatever exactly came out of his mouth in that half time worked, because we were a completely different team [in the second half].”

First, Andy Cole halved Blackburn’s deficit with a goal of almost comic ineptitude from both teams. Charlton’s Radostin Kishishev played a wild backpass right to the striker, who rounded keeper Dean Kiely. So far, so good for Cole. But despite kicking balls for a living, he initially proved incapable of applying sufficient force to send it in a 10-yard straight line into an empty net. However, Charlton’s accommodating defenders gave Cole time to try again, and find the empty net he finally did.

Then, with time almost up at the Valley, came Friedel’s moment. As Brett Emerton stood over a corner kick, Souness ushered his keeper into the Charlton box.

Emerton’s delivery was overhit, sailing over everyone’s heads, but Paul Gallagher mopped up the loose ball and rifled it back into the box. After deflecting off a Charlton boot, Gallagher’s cross fell right at the feet of Friedel. With only a split-second to react, he produced a fine instinctive finish, pinging it low into the net with his unfavored left.

“I couldn’t even celebrate, everyone was right on top of me all in a flash,” Friedel told Matchday Memories. “Scoring a goal was something completely different. I had no idea how to feel about it really.”

With the Valley silenced by a swing of Friedel’s left boot, “that should have been that”, writes The Guardian’s Jacob Steinberg. “Charlton, the inept fools, had thrown the game away and Brad of the Rovers was the hero. All that was left now was to see whether Blackburn could score again in the time left.”

But no. In the seconds that remained, Charlton launched one final attack, Matt Holland sending a hopeful punt forward. Dropping to Claus Jensen on the edge of the area, the ball sat up nicely for the Dane. He struck a volley that hardly packed a net-busting punch - but it beat the Blackburn keeper all the same. “Friedel, presumably still giddy and not entirely focused after his goal, got a hand to the shot but not enough to keep it out,” Steinberg recalls.

“I think if we would have collected the point on the day, I would probably have woken up the next morning thinking, ‘That’s a pretty cool thing,’” Friedel says of his first and last career goal. “[But] we went from euphoria to just absolute devastation. We didn’t even get a chance to touch the ball and here were are down 3-2. Then we kick off, and the game’s over.”

Friedel’s boss was equally infuriated. “Souness expressed disbelief,” the Independent’s Ronald Atkin wrote in his match report at the time. “‘This is the story of our season,’ he lamented. ‘To come out of that game with nothing is totally unbelievable. I find it hard to explain.’ So hard, in fact, that he exited his media conference saying: ‘Sorry, I’m going.’”

How many goalkeepers have scored a Premier League goal?

Unhappy though the memory may be for Friedel, who hung up his gloves in 2015, the Ohio native’s goal earns him membership to a Premier League goalkeepers’ club that remains prohibitively exclusive. Throughout the competition’s more than three-decade history, after all, only six custodians have scored a goal.

Curiously, all but one of those goals came within a 12-year, beginning-of-the-century purple patch. Following on from Schmeichel and Friedel, Tottenham’s Paul Robinson (2007), Everton’s American Tim Howard (2012) and Stoke City’s Asmir Begovic (2013) took the tally to five. Not by haring forward for a late set piece, though: they each scored with long kicks up field that caught the wind, bounced over their opposite number, and went in.

And since Begovic’s goalscoring punt against Southampton over a decade ago, there has been just one more Premier League strike by a keeper. But it was probably the pick of the six - both in its execution and its significance. And it was a thrilling new chapter in soccer’s keeper-in-the-wrong-box story.

“An unbelievable header”

In May 2021, needing to beat West Brom to retain a realistic hope of Champions League qualification, Liverpool were drawing 1-1 at the Hawthorns. With the allotted four minutes of added time already played, the Reds had one final opportunity to send in a corner. Into the Baggies’ box went Liverpool keeper Alisson Becker.

Trent Alexander-Arnold’s inswinging cross found the near-post path taken by the Brazilian, who pulled off the not-to-be-sniffed-at feat of simultaneously glancing and thundering his header into the far corner.

“It’s an unbelievable header, I’ve never seen anything like that,” purred Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp. “It’s the best I’ve scored,” quipped Alisson. Like Friedel, he has no other career goals to his name. This solitary strike, however, is a memory cherished both by the 33-year-old and his family.

Spurred on by Alisson’s match-winning heroics, Liverpool did indeed make the Champions League - saving what had, quite frankly, been a nightmarish season for the Merseysiders, complete with a run of six straight league defeats at Anfield. When he scored at West Brom, moreover, Alisson had been grieving the sudden loss of his father, who had drowned at the age of 57 just three months earlier.

Speaking in the documentary Alisson: My Story, the keeper’s wife, Natália Loewe, recalled the much-needed emotional release that her husband’s dramatic, crucial goal provided after times of adversity. “We received it as a gift,” Loewe said; the celebrations were “the best moment we lived, I think”.

The full list - every Premier League goal by a keeper:

• Oct. 20, 2001: Peter Schmeichel, for Aston Villa vs Everton
• Feb. 21, 2004: Brad Friedel, for Blackburn vs Charlton
• Mar. 17, 2007: Paul Robinson, for Tottenham vs Watford
• Jan. 4, 2012: Tim Howard, for Everton vs Bolton
• Nov. 2, 2013: Asmir Begovic, for Stoke vs Southampton
• May 16, 2021: Alisson Becker, for Liverpool vs West Brom

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