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One of the most beautiful sights in football is witnessing the goalkeeper take a penalty and go on to score from it. The reason being that the shot-stoppers are the ones meant to save the shots rather than be the shooters themselves.
Hence, seeing them on the other end of the show is always exciting. However, penalties are penalties and they are missed by almost every other player. So it is not much of a surprise witnessing a goalkeeper take a spot kick and miss it.
And here are 5 times when such a thing happened...
#5 Gianluigi Donnarumma
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So it was the summer of 2015 and Diego Lopez was facing his former club in a friendly game whilst playing for Milan. It was kind of like a welcome reunion because Iker Casillas – the man for whom Lopez had to be sold to Milan in the first place – was let go to Porto.
Deep in the second half – in the 72nd minute to be precise – Lopez was subbed off for a guy that would eventually bench him just a few months later (Madrid seem to be like a bad luck juju for Lopez, no?): a 16-year-old Gianluigi Donnarumma.
It was the first time that the much-admired goalkeeper played for his club, AC Milan, as he managed to not concede from open play for the rest of the game. When the normal time ended, the game went on to penalties and it was one of the longest shootouts in the history of the game.
Indeed, the contest carried on for so long that the goalkeepers of both the teams – the last takers – came up to take their penalties. While Kiko Casilla scored his penalty to give Real a 10-9 lead over the Rossoneri, Donnarumma’s subsequent kick was saved by the former Espanyol goal guardian, providing Real Madrid a victory in the end.
#4 Jon Kempin
He is perhaps the least known goalkeeper on this list and that is only natural since he plays in Major League Soccer in the United States of America. Jon Kempin is a 24-year-old American goalkeeper who has played in the MLS for quite a while now.
At the time of this event, Jon Kempin was playing for Sporting Kansas City. The match was against Portland Timbers and, most importantly, it was a play-off encounter in the Western Conference that would see the winner reach the semi-finals of the tournament.
In the 57th minute of the game, Portland Timbers scored via a Rodney Wallace goal. However, the lead was gone when Sporting’s Kevin Ellis equalised for his team with three minutes on the clock. As the match headed into extra time, Kansas City took the lead for the first time in the game with a goal in the 96th minute.
With the clock ticking and the time running out, Kansas City might have thought they had won the game with just two minutes of extra time remaining. However, a goal in the 118th minute from Maximiliano Urruti took the game to penalties.
It was almost as if the match just didn’t want to end as the shootout just went on and on until the goalkeepers had to take them. Kempin stood up and needed to score for his team to win – he had already saved three penalties up until then – but, well, he missed.... obviously.
#3 Rogerio Ceni
Let’s talk a little about Rogerio Ceni. ‘Who the ****,’ goes the mind of the uninitiated and what I am about to write now will change the ‘who’ to ‘how’.
Rogerio Ceni is one of that rare breed of players who stuck with just one club for their entire professional career. In the case of Ceni – a Brazilian – he played for Sao Paulo for an astonishing 23 years. Given that he is 44 now, it could be claimed that the man’s playing career with Sao Paulo was more than half of his life.
No, no, this is not the conversion from ‘who’ to ‘how’ part. Good things come to people who wait.... okay, that’s enough hype: Rogerio Ceni scored 131 goals in his professional career. Jaw has dropped already, hasn’t it?
Despite the fact that most of his goals came via penalties and free-kicks, scoring over a century of goals as a goalkeeper is a milestone in itself. However, even he is not beyond the pain of missing a spot kick.
Sao Paulo were trailing 1-0 against Corinthians as the former gave away a penalty in the 54th minute of the game. Obviously, Ceni went ahead to complete his duty of taking the spot-kick, but his shot went straight to the legs of the opposition goalkeeper and then crashed off the cross-bar to deny him the chance to equalise in the game.
#2 Manuel Neuer
Manuel Neuer is among the best goalkeepers in the world. His ability on the ball in itself makes him a standout sweeper-keeper when compared to others. However, those skills couldn't stop him from missing a spot-kick.
One of the best things about this shootout was that none of the players in Bayern Munich’s side could score from any of their respective spot-kicks, such was the quality – or, in this case, lack of - of the shots that were taken.
It was a DFB Pokal semi-final encounter between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. After the playing a total of 120 minutes in the game, both the teams were tied by one goal each. Obviously, there needed to be a binary outcome and that is why penalties exist.
So began the spot kicks with Philipp Lahm and Xabi Alonso slipping whilst taking their respective shots and subsequently missing them. Meanwhile, Dortmund goalkeeper, Mitchell Langerak, saved Mario Gotze’s shot.
Up next was Manuel Neuer. He had to score to keep the contest alive. Unfortunately for him – and hilariously for Sergio Ramos, who, Neuer claimed, likes to take his penalties over the bar – he hit the ball straight at the crossbar and gave Dortmund the win and a place in the final of the cup competition.
#1 Thibaut Courtois
When it comes to stopping penalties, Thibaut Courtois is one of the most reliable goalkeepers. The Belgian’s huge frame allows him to cover a lot of space, which in turn makes him a great shot-stopper.
On the other side of the coin, though, he failed to make a mark when being gifted the chance to do so. In the Community Shield at the beginning of the season, Arsenal, the FA Cup champions, were pitted against the champions of England, Chelsea.
The match ended 1-1 after full-time and penalties were the only way to determine the winner of the match. Chelsea started their penalties with captain Gary Cahill blasting the ball past former team-mate, Petr Cech, to open the scoring for his team.
To the surprise of many, however, the next kick taker for Chelsea was Thibaut Courtois. The decision to send him as the second taker was because, apparently, he hits them well according to his manager, Antonio Conte.
But – surprise, surprise! – he blasted the ball way over the cross-bar. The Belgian must have mistaken the penalty for a goal kick because that is the only viable explanation for the way he missed that as the ball safely landed on Mars a few days later.
