Why don’t goalkeepers put on caps anymore?

Brad and Charlie Hart are season-ticket holders at Spurs. Father and son, they all the time sit close to the tunnel on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and at full time, after each sport, 10-year-old Charlie will rush to attempt to get the eye of the gamers as they stroll off the pitch.

However earlier this month, after Tottenham had crushed West Ham United 4-1, Charlie realised he had forgotten his trusted marker pen for these autographs he covets a lot. Little did he know that he would depart the stadium that Saturday afternoon not with a number of squiggles of ink on his shirt or a programme however with a real collector’s merchandise.

Through the match, Spurs’ goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario had placed on a baseball cap to maintain the lunchtime solar from his eyes, a second celebrated by nostalgic soccer purists as a welcome return of a once-prominent piece of goalkeeper package. “Old skool vibes,” mentioned one fan on social media.

These had been the times: a ’keeper in a cap or possibly jogging pants, placing consolation earlier than vogue, wanting extra suitably dressed to scrub the automotive or take the canine for a Sunday morning stroll than play on the planet’s prime home soccer league. Whereas it was commonplace within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s to see a goalkeeper in a cap — Oliver Kahn for Germany and Bayern Munich springs to thoughts — it’s a extra uncommon sight now. Lengthy gone are the times of goalkeepers sporting flat caps, like the good Lev Yashin.

“Vicario got here out with the goalkeeper coach (Rob Burch), who was holding the cap,” Charlie, from Harpenden, a commuter city north of London, tells The Athletic. “He (Burch) simply appeared in my eyes and mentioned, ‘Catch’, after which he threw the cap. I caught it in a single hand as a result of my dad’s telephone was within the different, though I might have fortunately dropped my dad’s telephone to safe the catch.”

Not like his father, who remembers goalkeepers in caps as a extra acquainted sight, it was the primary time exterior YouTube movies that Charlie had seen a ’keeper sporting one in a sport.

In recent times, England internationals Dean Henderson and Jordan Pickford have worn caps for his or her golf equipment, Crystal Palace and Everton, however they’re within the minority.

So why has the hat-wearing goalkeeper grow to be so uncommon?

Worldwide Soccer Affiliation Board (IFAB) guidelines for the 2024-25 season state that caps for goalkeepers are permitted, as are “sports activities spectacles” and tracksuit bottoms. There are additionally particular guidelines on head covers for gamers, together with the necessity for them to be black or the identical essential color because the shirt, however the identical directives don’t apply to baseball-style caps worn by goalkeepers. If the foundations haven’t modified, what has?

Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland grew to become synonymous with cap-wearing throughout his professional profession, which started within the late Nineteen Nineties. When individuals 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 a younger participant at Coventry Metropolis’s academy after seeing the senior group’s first-choice goalkeeper, Steve Ogrizovic, use one. Kirkland discovered it useful for reinforcing focus ranges, as a lot as for conserving the solar’s glare out of his eyes.

“I all the time used to put on one in coaching as a result of I’m not nice within the solar,” Kirkland, who joined Liverpool in 2001 aged 20 in a deal that made him the costliest goalkeeper in Britain, tells The Athletic. 

“I burn, so I used to put on caps to maintain the solar off my face. However I obtained used to it and it helped give me higher imaginative and prescient. It used to dam different issues out and I discovered myself having the ability to focus extra as a result of it blocked out distractions. I used to put on it generally even when it wasn’t sunny, which I used to get a number of unusual seems to be for.

“A cap can block the solar out at sure angles, which I used to seek out useful. I’m shocked ‘keepers don’t put on them anymore since you see them (when dealing with the solar). They put their arm up and their hand over their eyes, which is clearly a distraction itself.”

Followers have come to the rescue of squinting goalkeepers loads of occasions. When Leeds United goalkeeper Felix Wiedwald was battling the sunshine away at Barnsley in 2017, a supporter emerged from the away finish to heroically quit his cap. A 12 months later, a West Ham fan threw one onto the pitch for England’s No 1 Joe Hart to put on throughout an FA Cup third-round tie in opposition to Shrewsbury City. 

“I caught with the identical cap for years,” Kirkland provides. “It was a navy blue Nike one, and the Nike tick finally fell off as a result of I wore it that a lot. I did effectively within the first sport and caught with it. The one time I might put on one other is that if I had taken it out of my package bag to scrub it. It was rotten by the tip, however I stored it for years till the missus made me get rid. She was like, ‘That’s completely honking and has obtained to go!’.”

Richard Lee is a former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper identified for his caps — however not as a result of he used to put on one.

“I’ve obtained a bit extra of an affiliation with caps as a result of I went on Dragons’ Den (a British business-based sport present) again within the day and it was for a cap firm, however I by no means wore one in a sport,” Lee, now a soccer agent with a protracted record of goalkeeper shoppers, tells The Athletic. 

“Sporting a cap was good when the solar is out of your eyes, however the second a cross is available in, or a ball is performed excessive, and also you get that sudden glare, you lookup and the solar hits you. So, I’d virtually favor to have the solar there the entire time and also you knew the place it was.”

Type may very well be another excuse for goalkeepers opting out of sporting caps. It may merely be a vogue selection.

“You take a look at the goalkeepers now and so they realise they’ve obtained a sure model and look, and that does play an element,” Lee provides. “If you exit (onto the pitch) you need to really feel a sure means and current your self a sure means, whether or not that’s to the followers, the scouts or your team-mates.”

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Elite goalkeepers selecting to not put on caps influences the following technology, too. “The youthful ones will copy what the present Premier League goalkeepers are doing,” Lee says. “You’re seeing it much less and fewer at youthful age teams too.”

In the direction of the tip of her profession, former Everton and England goalkeeper Rachel Brown-Finnis discovered “a greater various” to sporting a cap.

“For some time, Nike produced sunglasses-like comfortable contact lenses. They had been shiny orange and while you put them in they appeared a bit ‘Halloween’,” Brown-Finnis tells The Athletic. “They had been by far the simplest factor. I hated sporting caps as a result of they had been advantageous if the ball was on the bottom, however as quickly because the ball got here up within the air, you needed to tilt your angle and imaginative and prescient — you had been wanting into the solar.”

Brown-Finnis mentioned sunshine is an issue for goalkeepers and will increase the significance of the pre-game coin toss for a day sport. A goalkeeper, she mentioned, would need their counterpart to be dealing with the solar within the first half within the hope the power of the solar’s rays died down within the second.

“Clearly that being seen as a bonus on your group to not be within the solar within the first half, it does have an effect on the goalkeeper and gamers. It’s attention-grabbing that there’s not a typical intervention for that,” she mentioned.

Jacob Widell Zetterstrom of Derby County, within the second-tier Championship, is without doubt one of the few goalkeepers throughout the skilled sport in England who wears headgear. The Sweden worldwide wears a protecting scrum cap, one thing The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst Matt Pyzdrowski is aware of.

Through the remaining seven years of his profession, spent taking part in in Sweden, the place he nonetheless resides as head of academy for his former membership Angelholms, Pyzdrowski wore a protecting head guard, much like the one popularised by former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, who returned to the game sporting the rugby-style cap in January 2007, three months after a collision with Studying’s Stephen Hunt fractured his cranium.

“It was too many concussions in a brief interval,” Pyzdrowski says. “I bear in mind the specialist I met instructed me, ‘Matt, you’ve got to watch out, as a result of we don’t know the way a lot that is going to impression you. If you wish to have a superb life sooner or later, it is advisable begin enthusiastic about the danger versus reward of 1) taking part in and a couple of) defending your self’.

“If you put that into perspective, I used to be like, ‘I’ve to put on a helmet’. For the remainder of my profession, I had a rugby helmet on. Each single coaching session, each single match, it grew to become a part of my outfit.

“It took a while to get used to heading the ball, in addition to studying methods to management it, however the huge profit was the way it made me really feel safe. If you come again from a head damage, you grow to be timid, even for those who had been an aggressive goalkeeper earlier than that. It took me some time to really feel secure once more, even once I had the helmet.”

Pyzdrowski mentioned protecting headgear is turning into extra prevalent in Sweden, with a number of top-flight goalkeepers sporting them. “As a goalkeeper, you’re very weak. It’s a must to be courageous and put your self in very tough and unsafe conditions. Once I give it some thought, and concerning the security of goalkeepers, it actually ought to grow to be a precedence,” he says. 

As for Charlie, after taking Vicario’s cap to highschool to indicate his classmates, he’s hoping to get it signed by the participant himself at one in every of Tottenham’s upcoming dwelling video games. It’s going to then be put in a show case — a reminder of the particular household day that sparked a nostalgic outpouring throughout the soccer world.

(Prime images: Getty Pictures; design: Eamonn Dalton)