da brwin： “He liked the excitement of taking care of the ball,” Alex Ferguson told UEFA.com earlier this year. “I remember he kept telling me he was a better outfield player.”
da heads bet： The player in question was Fabien Barthez, and probably a goalkeeper well ahead of his time.
At Manchester City last season, Claudio Bravo was called-upon to play the role of the sweeper-keeper, certainly not a new concept, but one which is becoming more and more commonplace in football, as teams attempt to keep possession and build up from the back.
It wasn’t like that almost two decades ago when Barthez was brought to Manchester by Alex Ferguson to replace Peter Schmeichel. The Great Dane left the club just after the 1999 treble triumph, and the Red Devils spent most of the next season attempting to plug the gap he left with a combination of Mark Bosnich, Raimond van der Gouw and, regrettably, Massimo Taibi. For the 2000/01 season, clearly a new goalkeeper was a priority.
In first season, it worked. Barthez was part of a squad who were so dominant in the Premier League that they took first place after a 3-0 victory over Leicester City on 14th October and stayed there ever since. They eventually won the league by ten points despite losing their final three games.
Despite their dominance, though, there were signs that United weren’t at the peak of their powers. They were knocked out of the Champions League at the quarter-final stage by Bayern Munich, in revenge for the final in Barcelona two years previously. But before they’d even got to that point, United were already out of both domestic cup competitions. The league was their only trophy, and the lack of competition they faced from week to week perhaps contributed to that stagnation.
Indeed, United were knocked out of the in only the FA Cup fourth round by West Ham United in a game which saw the first signs that Barthez’s eccentricity might pose problems for United going forward.
As Paolo Di Canio was bearing down on goal, most people in the ground thought he was offside. The flag never went up, and instead of rushing out to dive at the striker’s feet, Barthez stayed in his six-yard box with his hand up, partly appealing for offside, partly hoping to put the Italian off. The United goalkeeper was unsuccessful.
It was the only failure of an otherwise successful season, however. And the next year, Barthez started again as first choice in the Manchester United goal.
It would prove to be a more difficult season, though, as strikers had realised Barthez liked to play out from the back. And, much like Claudio Bravo experienced, coincidentally for the first time at Old Trafford, strikers had worked him out, and gave him no time on the ball. In the cases of both keepers, the result is predictable.
That’s when things started to unravel for Barthez at United. One particular Champions League game against Deportivo La Coruna saw Barthez gift the visiting Spaniards two goals – the equaliser and the winner, no less – throwing away a two goal lead and putting pressure on the side in their final two group games.
Both times, Barthez had rushed out of his box, leaving an empty net behind him, and both times he was punished.
And yet, the French goalkeeper was genuinely a man in the modern day Pep Guardiola mould, even if he didn’t fit comfortably into a Manchester United side of the early 2000s. After the debacle against Deportivo, Barthez opined the fact that his second season had become harder than his first because strikers had worked out how to play against them.
“I get less chance to express myself in our build-up play,” he said, “because there’s always somebody putting me under pressure.”
Even today it would be odd in the extreme to hear a goalkeeper complain that he doesn’t get the chance to ‘express’ himself in his side’s build-up play. It seems that goalkeepers aren’t in the side to express themselves, but are there for a very specific reason. And even Pep Guardiola might have reservations about a goalkeeper fighting for his right to self-expression on a football pitch.
And yet, if he were around today, Barthez would very much be a Guardiola type of player. He was agile, and capable of making a save. Above all, though, he was successful, showing that a team with that type of goalkeeper can not just win any league, but can win two Premier League titles. Barthez also played in two World Cup finals, winning one and captaining his country in the other (for the final few minutes after the sending off of Zinedine Zidane).
These days, Barthez could be something of a treasure, rather than an eccentric to be parodied. If Ferguson is right, and Barthez really did think he was a better outfield player than a goalkeeper then perhaps he’s the kind of sweeper-keeper that English football should be looking to cultivate in the future, not make the butt of jokes. You get the feeling he arrived 20 years too soon and, ironically, he’d feel right at home in Manchester.