Welcome, everybody to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell. This week we're looking at maybe the least heralded but most important position on the soccer pitch.

Graham Rutherland, how do you feel about goalkeeping?

It's an important but unsexy part of soccer is my feelings. Did you ever play as a goalkeeper, Taylor?

Or were you actually good at soccer?

Yes and no.

Yeah, I was a goalkeeper when I first started playing soccer, and I hated it because I definitely thought if a team scored, it was entirely my fault.

I didn't quite know when to come off the line.

I didn't know how to close down angles.

I like diving into the mud.

That was the thing that I really enjoyed, but I don't think I was particularly good at it. And then I moved into the outfield and stayed there

from then on our playing field. I remember I was putting goal for one game. So we actually had,

our best player in our team was a goalkeeper. He played for Scotland schoolboys, so he was

actually pretty decent, a kid called Jamie. And he turned up late. He was in his 40s.

He was late to one game.

So I was putting goal for the first half of this game, which, you know, I didn't take as an insult or anything.

And I kept a clean sheet for the first half.

He comes in at half time, and within two minutes, he'd considered a goal and i thought that was my calling could be you could be a goalkeeper yeah so when the tsss five-aside team uh begins you're going in goal you good with that i mean i'm quite tall ryan's quite tall as well so maybe that maybe it's one of the two br going in goal, but I don't really have the physical presence to be a goalkeeper, I don't think, and certainly not the technical ability to play in goal in the modern game. Who would you trust between the four of us, like to be a sweeper keeper? Who are you backing to come out and make the saves and make the plays and hold onto the ball? Weirdly, Joe? I don't know why. I'll go with that. All right. Joe goes in goal for the Total Soccer Show, but we'll see how that plays out. For now, Graham, let's talk about goalkeepers, the history, some of the most famous ones, how the position has evolved, how it might continue to evolve. Let's start in the Wayback Machine. When is the

position of goalkeeper first codified? Yeah, so I had a lot of fun looking back in the Wayback

machine for this episode. So as far as I could see, for as long as soccer has been played as a codified

sport, which goes back to the 19th century when you have some of the

FA rules and the Sheffield rules, there have been goalkeepers. And in fact, goalkeeper

is the only position that has been a thing since the invention of the sport. So back in the day,

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