In extra time of the 2020 Championship playoff final, with promotion to the Premier League on the line, Fulham's Joe Bryan took a free kick from the left wing. Everyone, including Brentford goalkeeper David Raya, was expecting a cross.
"I knew I could've done better, it was a lack of awareness... I left one side too exposed," Raya tells ESPN. "I couldn't let it get me down because we were in extra time of the playoff final and it could have turned any way."
With the clock running down, Brentford fought back, but the final whistle heralded a 2-1 loss for them and promotion for Fulham.
"After the game, it was very a tough situation to deal with; I felt like I'd let everyone down," Raya says, reluctantly reliving the nightmare. "I'd been in the same position the whole season and prevented many goals from that type of cross, then he decided to have a shot and it went in."
This is the injustice of life between the sticks. Every positive action is wiped from history by a costly error.
"You feel alone, and all the bad thoughts go straight to your head. If I had done better, we could have got promoted. The scale of the situation hit me hard a few days later."
But the Bees came back. Raya came back. Brentford won promotion to the Premier League in 2021 and have quickly established themselves as a solid midtable club. Raya's outstanding club form earned him his debut for Spain, and he was named in La Roja's 2022 World Cup squad.
"Sometimes, you are the hero as well," he says with a laugh. "You can win matches with your saves. But you have to remember, at some point, you will make a mistake and everyone will be focused on you."
And now that goalkeepers play a proactive role for many teams with their aggressive positioning high up the pitch and smart distribution, the risk of a mistake is greatly increased. Should they make an error, they'd best brace themselves for impact. Cut off from the rest of the team and standing closest to the fans, they feel the venom spewing down from the stands.
Who'd be a goalkeeper, eh? It takes a unique individual to don the gloves and work constantly on the edge of failure.
The changing game
The introduction of the back-pass law in 1992 changed everything. Saving shots and claiming crosses was no longer enough, now goalkeepers were expected to deal with passes to their feet from panicked defenders. To begin with, launching the ball up the pitch as the crowd took a collective gasp earned an encouraging round of applause from teammates.
Expectations have changed in the modern era. Progressive managers want goalkeepers to receive the ball in their six-yard box and play through lines, as a pack of onrushing attackers zero in. Goalkeepers, unlike other players, have only 180 degrees of space to play in. They can't receive a pass, turn out and play backwards to another teammate.
Sweeper-keeper Raya can do the lot. He leads the Premier League goalkeeping charts for shots on target faced and shots saved this season and is second for crosses claimed. No goalkeeper in the division has had more touches of the ball this season than he has. During Brentford's successful promotion campaign in 2020-21, he completed 300 more passes than any of the other goalkeepers in the Championship.
"The goalkeeper could wear the No. 10 shirt," Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said after a 3-3 draw at Brentford in September 2021. "He has sent several incredible balls, exactly what you should do when you play against us."
Raya explains: "Obviously the main thing is to stop the ball going back in the net, but I've also got a lot of demands to be the last line of the defence and first line of attack. I'm also involved at set pieces and the patterns we work to play out from or even the solutions for when we go long."
Imagine flipping this the other way and asking outfield players to start saving shots. And there's more. Traditionally, a goalkeeper's positioning was important only for active participation -- e.g., at a set piece or facing a shot. Now it's where they're standing in and out of possession and how that impacts the opposition.
