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Beyond the Last-gasp Heroes: Goalscoring keepers in all their Glory
September 08, 2015
While we tend to think of goalkeeper’s scoring a last-minute goal acts of heroism, there are a surprising number of custodians who have delivered goals on a regular basis throughout their careers. For every game-changing, injury time strike (think of Jimmy Glass and how his crucial goal for Carlisle that kept them in the Football League), there are hundreds of goals that have been scored by ‘keepers in far less dramatic circumstances.
So let’s remove the occasional goalscorers from our minds and focus on the ‘keepers who have made the opposition’s net bulge throughout their careers. Here are three of the best…
Rogerio Ceni (Sao Paulo)
Jose Luis Chilavert (Paraguay)
Hans-Jorg Butt (Bayer Leverkusen and Germany)
Despite scoring 34 goals in his distinguished career, penalty-expert Butt is most renowned for one incident during a game with Schalke in the Bundesliga in 2004. After coolly stepping up to convert a penalty for Leverkusen, Butt was left cursing his luck when the quick-thinking home side restarted the game and scored before he had returned to his net. The ‘head in hands’ moment aside, Butt has remains a prolific penalty taker throughout his career while also providing a robust barrier at the opposite end of the pitch.