Aren't they mollycoddled these days? Was chatting to @Ladygargar this aver and she mentioned that De Gea was lucky not to have conceded that last gasp goal against Spain, deemed to having been fouled by Welbeck. She's right, of course. Keepers are WAY overprotected in the modern game and have been for years. You only have to look at the buggers and they promptly throw themselves on the ground and start squirming as though they've been shot. Pathetic!
When I first started playing, keepers were given no such consideration and often had to be the toughest member of the team because of the rough-house attention they got from opposing centre forwards who were usually pretty burly types. Typical of what went on was the second goal scored for Bolton against Manchester United in the 1958 Cup Final at Wembley. Younger posters will be amazed that this sort of thing was commonplace in British football at the time whereas foreign keepers were virtually untouchable when playing in their own domestic leagues. This gradually seeped into our game.
Points of interest from the following video. United's Colin Webster went on to play for the Swans and he was a tough little so and so. In this final, he flattened a Bolton player off the ball, which the commentator missed and thought was an accident. He flattened many players in his time with us in cahoots with another like minded player in Brayley Reynolds. Lethal twosome they were!! Harry Gregg, the United keeper and hero of the Munich plane crash the year before, became Swansea manager when he finished playing. Alex Dawson, the United forward, scored Preston's semi final leveller against us from the penalty spot in 1964. And finally, Eddie Hopkinson the Bolton keeper, was one of the top stoppers in the game during his career despite standing just 5ft 8" tall. He also got 14 caps for England.
When I first started playing, keepers were given no such consideration and often had to be the toughest member of the team because of the rough-house attention they got from opposing centre forwards who were usually pretty burly types. Typical of what went on was the second goal scored for Bolton against Manchester United in the 1958 Cup Final at Wembley. Younger posters will be amazed that this sort of thing was commonplace in British football at the time whereas foreign keepers were virtually untouchable when playing in their own domestic leagues. This gradually seeped into our game.
Points of interest from the following video. United's Colin Webster went on to play for the Swans and he was a tough little so and so. In this final, he flattened a Bolton player off the ball, which the commentator missed and thought was an accident. He flattened many players in his time with us in cahoots with another like minded player in Brayley Reynolds. Lethal twosome they were!! Harry Gregg, the United keeper and hero of the Munich plane crash the year before, became Swansea manager when he finished playing. Alex Dawson, the United forward, scored Preston's semi final leveller against us from the penalty spot in 1964. And finally, Eddie Hopkinson the Bolton keeper, was one of the top stoppers in the game during his career despite standing just 5ft 8" tall. He also got 14 caps for England.
