Brad and Charlie Hart are season-ticket holders at Spurs. Father and son, they all the time take a seat related the tunnel on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and at complete presen, upcoming each duel, 10-year-old Charlie will speed to attempt to get the eye of the avid gamers as they advance off the tone.
However previous this while, upcoming Tottenham had crushed West Ham United 4-1, Charlie realised he had forgotten his relied on marker pen for the ones autographs he covets such a lot. Modest did he know that he would drop the stadium that Saturday afternoon no longer with a couple of squiggles of ink on his blouse or a programme however with a real collector’s merchandise.
All the way through the fit, Spurs’ goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario had placed on a baseball cap to stock the lunchtime solar from his optic, a age celebrated through nostalgic soccer purists as a welcome go back of a once-prominent piece of goalkeeper equipment. “Old school vibes,” mentioned one fan on social media.
The ones had been the times: a ’keeper in a cap or possibly jogging pants, hanging condolense ahead of type, taking a look extra suitably dressed to clean the automobile or whip the canine for a Sunday morning advance than play games on this planet’s peak home soccer league. Life it was once common within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s to peer a goalkeeper in a cap — Oliver Kahn for Germany and Bayern Munich springs to thoughts — this is a extra peculiar vision now. Lengthy long gone are the times of goalkeepers sporting flat caps, just like the splendid Lev Yashin.
“Vicario came out with the goalkeeper coach (Rob Burch), who was holding the cap,” Charlie, from Harpenden, a commuter the town north of London, tells The Athletic. “He (Burch) just looked in my eyes and said, ‘Catch’, and then he threw the cap. I caught it in one hand because my dad’s phone was in the other, although I would have happily dropped my dad’s phone to secure the catch.”
Guglielmo Vicario took lovers ailing reminiscence lane when he wore a cap towards West Ham (Zac Goodwin/PA Photographs by means of Getty Photographs)
In contrast to his father, who recollects goalkeepers in caps as a extra ordinary vision, it was once the primary presen out of doors YouTube movies that Charlie had evident a ’keeper sporting one in a duel.
Lately, England internationals Dean Henderson and Jordan Pickford have impaired caps for his or her golf equipment, Crystal Palace and Everton, however they’re within the minority.
So why has the hat-wearing goalkeeper change into so uncommon?
World Soccer Affiliation Board (IFAB) regulations for the 2024-25 season order that caps for goalkeepers are approved, as are “sports spectacles” and tracksuit bottoms. There also are particular regulations on head covers for avid gamers, together with the desire for them to be dull or the similar major color because the blouse, however the similar directives don’t practice to baseball-style caps impaired through goalkeepers. If the foundations haven’t modified, what has?
Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland changed into synonymous with cap-wearing throughout his professional profession, which started within the past due Nineteen Nineties. When society meet him now, the 43-year-old says it’s nonetheless one thing he’s remembered for.
Kirkland, who received one cap for England, began sporting a cap in coaching when he was once a tender participant at Coventry Town’s academy upcoming vision the senior staff’s first-choice goalkeeper, Steve Ogrizovic, worth one. Kirkland discovered it useful for reinforcing focus ranges, up to for conserving the solar’s glare out of his optic.
Lev Yashin sporting a flat cap when taking part in for the Soviet Union towards England throughout the 1958 Global Cup (Pressens Bild / AFP)
“I always used to wear one in training because I’m not great in the sun,” Kirkland, who joined Liverpool in 2001 elderly 20 in a offer that made him the costliest goalkeeper in Britain, tells The Athletic.
“I burn, so I used to wear caps to keep the sun off my face. But I got used to it and it helped give me better vision. It used to block other things out and I found myself being able to concentrate more because it blocked out distractions. I used to wear it sometimes even when it wasn’t sunny, which I used to get a few strange looks for.
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Chris Kirkland: ‘I was taking 2,500mg of Tramadol a day. I had it in my goalie bag on the pitch’
“A cap can block the sun out at certain angles, which I used to find helpful. I’m surprised ‘keepers don’t wear them anymore because you see them (when facing the sun). They put their arm up and their hand over their eyes, which is obviously a distraction itself.”
Lovers have come to the rescue of squinting goalkeepers enough of instances. When Leeds United goalkeeper Felix Wiedwald was once suffering with the light away at Barnsley in 2017, a supporter emerged from the away finish to heroically surrender his cap. A 12 months after, a West Ham fan threw one onto the tone for England’s #1 Joe Hart to put on throughout an FA Cup third-round connect towards Shrewsbury The city.
Kirkland performed for Coventry, Liverpool and Wigan Athletic amongst others (David Davies/PA Photographs by means of Getty Photographs)
“I stuck with the same cap for years,” Kirkland provides. “It was a navy blue Nike one, and the Nike tick eventually fell off because I wore it that much. I did well in the first game and stuck with it. The only time I would wear another is if I had taken it out of my kit bag to wash it. It was rotten by the end, but I kept it for years until the missus made me get rid. She was like, ‘That is absolutely honking and has got to go!’.”
Richard Lee is a former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper identified for his caps — however no longer as a result of he worn to put on one.
“I’ve got a bit more of an association with caps because I went on Dragons’ Den (a British business-based game show) back in the day and it was for a cap company, but I never wore one in a game,” Lee, now a soccer agent with an extended checklist of goalkeeper shoppers, tells The Athletic.
“Wearing a cap was good when the sun is out of your eyes, but the moment a cross comes in, or a ball is played over the top, and you get that sudden glare, you look up and the sun hits you. So, I’d almost prefer to have the sun there the whole time and you knew where it was.”
Taste may well be one more reason for goalkeepers opting out of sporting caps. It would merely be a way desire.
“You look at the goalkeepers now and they realise they’ve got a certain brand and look, and that does play a part,” Lee provides. “When you go out (onto the pitch) you want to feel a certain way and present yourself a certain way, whether that’s to the fans, the scouts or your team-mates.”
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Elite goalkeepers opting for to not put on caps influences the later time, too. “The younger ones will copy what the current Premier League goalkeepers are doing,” Lee says. “You’re seeing it less and less at younger age groups too.”
Against the top of her profession, former Everton and England goalkeeper Rachel Brown-Finnis discovered “a better alternative” to sporting a cap.
“For a while, Nike produced sunglasses-like soft contact lenses. They were bright orange and when you put them in they looked a bit ‘Halloween’,” Brown-Finnis tells The Athletic. “They were by far the most effective thing. I hated wearing caps because they were fine if the ball was on the ground, but as soon as the ball came up in the air, you had to tilt your angle and vision — you were looking into the sun.”
Brown-Finnis mentioned sunshine is a disease for goalkeepers and will increase the significance of the pre-game coin toss for a day duel. A goalkeeper, she mentioned, would wish their counterpart to be dealing with the solar within the first part within the hope the energy of the solar’s rays died ailing in the second one.
“Clearly that being seen as an advantage for your team to not be in the sun in the first half, it does affect the goalkeeper and players. It’s interesting that there’s not a standard intervention for that,” she mentioned.
Jacob Widell Zetterstrom of Derby County, within the second-tier Championship, is without doubt one of the few goalkeepers around the skilled duel in England who wears headgear. The Sweden global wears a protecting scrum cap, one thing The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst Matt Pyzdrowski is ordinary with.
Zetterstrom of Derby throughout a fit in August (Nathan Stirk/Getty Photographs)
All the way through the general seven years of his profession, spent taking part in in Sweden, the place he nonetheless is living as head of academy for his former membership Angelholms, Pyzdrowski wore a protecting head barricade, indistinguishable to the only popularised through former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, who returned to the game sporting the rugby-style cap in January 2007, 3 months upcoming a crash with Studying’s Stephen Hunt fractured his cranium.
“It was too many concussions in a short period,” Pyzdrowski says. “I remember the specialist I met told me, ‘Matt, you have got to be careful, because we don’t know how much this is going to impact you. If you want to have a good life in the future, you need to start thinking about the risk versus reward of 1) playing and 2) protecting yourself’.
“When you put that into perspective, I was like, ‘I have to wear a helmet’. For the rest of my career, I had a rugby helmet on. Every single training session, every single match, it became part of my outfit.
“It took some time to get used to heading the ball, as well as learning how to control it, but the big benefit was how it made me feel secure. When you come back from a head injury, you become timid, even if you were an aggressive goalkeeper before that. It took me a while to feel safe again, even when I had the helmet.”
Charlie Hart gained a memorable souvenir at Spurs’ house fit towards West Ham this while (Brad Hart)
Pyzdrowski mentioned protecting headgear is turning into extra common in Sweden, with a couple of top-flight goalkeepers sporting them. “As a goalkeeper, you are very vulnerable. You have to be brave and put yourself in very difficult and unsafe situations. When I think about it, and about the safety of goalkeepers, it really should become a priority,” he says.
As for Charlie, upcoming taking Vicario’s cap to university to turn his classmates, he’s hoping to get it signed through the participant himself at considered one of Tottenham’s after house video games. It is going to after be installed a show case — a reminder of the particular population era that sparked a nostalgic outpouring inside the soccer global.
(Lead pictures: Getty Photographs; design: Eamonn Dalton)
