The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper by Jonathan Wilson

The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper Reviews

• 
  Josh Turner

  This is a very specific book... I'm not sure how many people would find it interesting. But if you are a really obsessed soccer fan, and especially if you are a goalkeeper, it is about as good as it could be.
• 
  Teodor Zhelyazkov

  This book is compulsory for anyone who has a sophisticated interest in the history of football and more specifically goalkeeping. The abundance of life stories of remarkable famous and unknown goalkeepers from the 1800s all the way to modern times is mind-blowing. In a fascinating way the author showcases not only the journey and careers of these goalkeepers but also the attitude and opinions of the societies and countries they were living in. Through that lens the reader learns a lot about the culture and values of the countries these goalies represented.
  The author also tracks down the origins of the goalkeeper position and its evolution from putting the person with the worst skills or fitness in goal to desperately needing a calm, reliable and strong character between the sticks. The different styles and practices of the goalkeepers from Scotland, England, Denmark, Spain, Cameroon, Brazil, Yugoslavia and the USSR are clearly demonstrated and contrasted and their triumphs and failures colourfully described. The book is constructed of precious threads of iconic saves and memorable mistakes varying from local unknown derbies through local legends all the way to World Cup finals. It would be a heavy read for people with a slight interest in football but an invaluable lesson to all with passion for goalkeeping.
  ''Exiled scapegoats can return to serve the collective as agents of its deepest and most difficult needs. There is, thus, something noble about the figure of the exile, standing alone as potential saviour.''
• 
  James

  I like Jonathan Wilson, and hearing he is going to be on Football Weekly or Second Captains makes me keener to listen. But with that in mind, this book is really dry, and a slog to get through.
  
  It reads as though Wilson has compiled an encyclopedia in prose form, then tried to rearrange it into vague chapters. The plus side is that less celebrated goalkeepers are featured, the negative is that it doesn't feel as though any keeper is featured in depth, and pointless anecdotes are included that often sound like myths anyway. The chapters don't necessarily appear coherent either - there is much discussion of Brazilian goalkeepers early on, then in the Penalties chapter we're given another biography of a Brazilian. The chapter on Germans starts with Peter Schmeichel.
  
  With so many characters, it is quite difficult to follow, and it is then really aggravating when Wilson puts forward his efforts for Pseuds' Corner. Among interesting stories this can be overlooked, but when featured alongside another Yugoslav goalkeeping coach you just want to sigh in exasperation.
  
  I'm sure a lot of effort went into this, but if so, that only makes the final work even more disappointing. Wilson isn't the most poetic writer normally but he is quite readable, and I'm at a loss as to how this was churned out. I'm no anti-intellectual when it comes to football, my footballing tastes can be quite pretentious, but this went beyond my limit.
• 
  Horatio

  
  Liked this book much less than I thought I would. Given that the only previous Wilson book that I had read was Inverting the Pyramid, I was hoping that this book would be similar to that by focusing on how the goalkeeping position had changed over the years, from a more conventional shot-stopper to the modern-day sweeper keeper. However, while Wilson did discuss the evolution of the position, it was not the focus of the book. In fact, a lot of the book felt like an archive of prominent goalkeepers from various regions, which was very dry and uninteresting. For example, he dedicated an entire chapter to English goalkeepers, which read something like this: First there was Gordon Banks, he was born in _ then played for these clubs ___ then there was this game where he made a phenomenal save, then he won the world cup (insert some uninteresting factoid about the world cup run which has nothing to do with tactics). This inspired Peter Shilton and Elisha Scott, who were born in _ then rinse and repeat. I ended up skimming many of these accounts and hoping for more tactical analysis, but then the next chapter focused on the history of Goalkeeping in Brazil, which just did the same thing but for the famous Brazilian keepers. Overall would not recommend, cos although it did feel like it had a lot of promise, and there was no doubt that Wilson had done a lot of research and looked into many archives for this content, it ultimately came across as drab and disappointing....
• 
  Tomaz Lasic

  This is a veritable chapterised encyclopedia of the development and stories of football goalkeepers and how their craft has evolved over centuries. Highly readable, entertaining and educative at the same time. I can see how some people who may not be as passionate about football and goalkeeping may find the sheer volume of stories and anecdotes a little tedious and chaptering somehow unusual but I for one thoroughly enjoyed the book. As a fellow author, I am forever indebted to Wilson's research efforts. I have used and acknowledged his work in my own book 'The Love of Goalkeeping', which looks at what is common to goalkeepers across different sports. Thank you Jonathan!
• 
  Book Time with Elvis

  Great read
  
  I know a bit about football enough to know some of the names mentioned in this book,but I am in no way a big football fan, I much prefer rugby so I do not really know why I read this book but I am glad I did. The story of goalkeeping how the author wishes to present it, is done intelligently while remaining very entertaining, easily readable and highly informative. Certainly you do not need to be an expert in football to enjoy this book, for me the stories of the goalkeepers lives were fascinating from the early days up to the present.
• 
  Göker Giresunlu

  Jonathan Wilson futbol üzerine en kaliteli içerikleri üreten yazarlardan biri ancak kitaplarını tasarladığı yapı çok yorucu. Kitap normal şartlarda dipnotlarda verilmesi yeterli olacak anekdotlara boğulmuş ve sayfa sayısı neredeyse iki katına çıkarılmış. Çok daha kısa ve öz bir anlatıyla kitabın amacına ulaşılabilirdi. Yine de Wilson'ın bu kitapta 150 yıllık bir mesleğin/pozisyonun tarihini içerisinde önemli yer edinmiş herkesin ismini anarak anlattığını düşünürsek yazarı takdir etmek gerekiyor. Okuması bu kadar yorucu olan bir kitabı yazmak ne kadar yorucudur tahmin edemiyorum...
• 
  Mike Collins

  This is a very comprehensive history of goalkeeping and yet one in which some 'greats' are only briefly mentioned. The development of the goalkeeper is charted, with different approaches and techniques explained and assessed. The good, the bad and Carlos's foul on Bellone are put into context and the psychology of goalkeeping is explored.
  All in all, a really interesting account of the goalkeeper, saviour and scapegoat, including interviews with the men who kept goal by keeping out goals.
• 
  John Nekrasov

  If you're a soccer and/or goalkeeping nerd (like me), well worth the read. Wilson's a great writer, and he pulls out some hilarious anecdotes, Niels Bohr letting in a goal because he was distracted by a math problem being one of my favorites.
  
  Like other people have said, it reads like an encyclopedia of sorts, so it's a little disjointed, but still a really fun and informative read on the background of a fascinating position full of colorful characters.
• 
  Jake S

  This book was often fascinating throughout. The anecdotes were fun and interesting. However, a big but, the book wasn't very well edited and I support the criticisms of others that it was often hard to follow. There were lots of names, it wasn't always clear who was being talked about and I couldn't work out the narrative often.
• 
  Kiel Khatulistiwa

  menceritakan kiper dari segi historis dan perkembangan nya, bagus sekali
• 
  Burak Isyar

  Oldukça sık kullanılmış ve faydalı bilgiler içeren çevirmen notları dikkat çekiyor.
• 
  Michael Elkon

  I really enjoyed this book, other than the parts about British soccer history. Wilson presents the goalkeeper as both an outsider from the team and as someone who has had to become more like the outfield players as the position has evolved. He highlights a few factors for why goalies are outsiders:
  
  1. Soccer was originally a fertility rite (think agricultural fertility, not human reproduction). If the ball went in the goal, then the harvest would be good. Who is stopping the objective of the game? The goalie.
  
  2. If someone wanted to fix a match, whom would they bribe? The goalie.
  
  3. Goalies tend to stand apart from the rest of the players and have different rules that apply to them. Also, they usually have a lot of time to ruminate on their individual mistakes, whereas outfield players are in the flow of the game and don't have time to obsess. As someone who tends to analyze (and over-analyze) everything and who plays goalie every Monday night, this explanation appealed to me. Wilson lists a number of famous philosophers and writers who have played the position. (Camus and Nabokov come to mind.) It's a thinker's position.
  
  Wilson does a great job of telling stories about goalies from all over the world. Some examples that stand out:
  
  1. The tension between goalies who tend to stay on their lines and goalies who are proactive in attacking situations outside of the box. Wilson offers two examples: Thomas Nkono and Joseph Antoine Bell in Cameroon and Ubaldo Fillol and Hugo Gatti in Argentina. No one has ever agreed on the right way for a keeper to play, although the position has certainly become one in which ball skills are important.
  
  2. The evolution of the sweeper keeper as a result of the Hungarians' outstanding team in the 1950s, followed by Total Football from the Dutch, Ajax, and then Barca in the 70s. In contrast, the Italians have generally preferred a more stationary keeper to go with their defensive systems.
  
  3. The cult of the keeper in the USSR as the individual who stands apart from the collective. Also, because the USSR produced the best keeper of all-time - Lev Yashin - there is a constant search for "the next Yashin," like the search for "the next Maradona" in Argentina, "the next Herschel" at UGA, or "the next Dylan" in rock music. I quite enjoyed Wilson's explanation as to why Russians struggle so much when they try to play abroad.
  
  4. The professionalization of goalkeeping in Brazil, which saw the country go from viewing the position as an embarrassment to one that that is important. Brazil never used to export goalies and now they have a number playing for big European clubs.
• 
  Pinko Palest

  There's a great deal of footballing detail here, and most of it is very interesting. For some reason though, the author wants to add a cultural angle, and that doesn't seem to work as well. Some of the omissions are odd: Nothing on Nevile Southall? Nothing on Czech and Slovak postwar goalkeepers? All in all, Goldblatt and Kuper are better in dealing with many of the subjects covered in this book, although Wilson is perhaps best on the purely footballing side
• 
  Vuk Trifkovic

  As good as you would expect it to be. Wilson is great writer and manages to combine factual and analytical. He does shine in directly reporting from the likes of Soskic, Ducadam and Stojanovic. Surprised to see that Enke story has been bypassed altogether. Perhaps it was too raw, perhaps it was too much of a Sui generis
• 
  John Costello

  Very enjoyable and interesting