Over the course of time, we have been treated to some outstanding goalkeepers in football. The likes of Lev Yashin, Dino Zoff, Oliver Kahn, Peter Schmeichel, Iker Casillas, Gianluigi Buffon and Manuel Neuer will go down in history as few of the greatest goalkeepers we have ever seen, but some will go down for being not quite as good as the hype around them may have suggested.
Playing in some great sides doesn’t automatically make you a great player, and as we will see here on this list, some of these players aren’t so great after all. Some were just incredibly lucky to be a part of superb teams, whilst others were just average.
Here we list the five most overrated goalkeepers in the world.
#5 Thibaut Courtois
No one can doubt that Courtois is a good goalkeeper, but to suggest that he is amongst some of the best goalkeepers on the planet isn’t justified. His time at Atletico Madrid showed that he does have a lot of ability and his potential meant that his parent club Chelsea had the perfect replacement to Petr Cech.
Courtois is on course to win a second Premier League trophy of his Chelsea career, yet he hasn’t been the goalkeeper that everyone expected him to be. He is a safe bet between the sticks, but he’s not someone who could be pushing Neuer or Buffon for the status of the best goalkeeper in the world.
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With Courtois trying to play out from the back a few times, an aspect he isn’t comfortable with, which has worked against him at times, including a few seasons ago where his awful first touch put the ball into the path of an oncoming Hull player to equalise.
The Belgian is not outstanding, he’s not special, but he can do a job. Overrated? That certainly seems the case.
#4 Victor Valdes
When a player is part of arguably the greatest club side in football, it’s more than likely that he is an exceptional player and probably the best in the world. For Victor Valdes, however, that’s proved to not be the case. What helped the former Barcelona goalkeeper is that he had an incredible base to work from and played for a side who hardly ever gave the ball away. The Spaniard rarely had to face a barrage of shots during a game.
Some say that Valdes isn’t overrated because of the clean sheets he kept, which is an impressive amount, but fans of the Spanish goalkeeper do not consider the number of shots he had to come up against, which was very few.
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Apart from the big clubs of La Liga, Barcelona controlled every game under Pep Guardiola, but when Valdes left Barcelona for Manchester United, it was a disaster.
His style of passing out from the back had caused huge problems at times for Barcelona, gifting goals to the likes of David Villa and Karim Benzema, as well his awful catching from a free kick in the Champions League against Lyon and almost decapitating a man against Copenhagen, also in the Champions League.
Being a part of that Barcelona team served him well during his career, but let’s just leave it by saying there was always a reason why he was in the shadow of Iker Casillas at international level.
#3 Joe Hart
The majority of fans in England have been saying for a number of years that Joe Hart is one of the best goalkeepers in the world, but with the number of mistakes he has made, it’s hard to buy into that argument. For years, Hart has been England’s No. 1 but some may believe it’s because he hasn’t had a serious challenger to that position for a long time.
His recent move to Torino was supposed to showcase his talents, but Hart has been a part of one of the leakiest defences in Serie A this season.
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When Pep Guardiola arrived at Manchester City, everyone knew Hart would be on his way out and the reason given was because of his lack of ball skills and distribution. However, Hart has always had a weakness against shots to his left-hand side, and is certain to end in a goal because he just cannot stop those shots.
It happened for England against Wales and Iceland in the Euros in 2016, and for someone who is meant to be a shot stopper, those are routine saves that he has to make
The move to Italy may well prove beneficial to the Englishman, but his weaknesses have been hidden on occasion. But the fact of the matter is Joe Hart isn’t a great goalkeeper, he isn’t even a good goalkeeper, he’s just a bang average shot stopper who happened to play for a Premier League winning side.
#2 Dida
A World Cup winner, a Champions League winner and a part of one of the greatest defences of all times, so how can Dida be overrated? Behind the likes of Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Nesta would probably make even the most average goalkeeper, look like an incredibly good keeper.
Dida will go down in history for being a weak point in an incredible defence containing the aforementioned Maldini and Nesta as well as Kakha Kaladze and Alessandro Costacurta. The Brazilian was always capable of a mistake, and in any other defence, he would probably have been exposed a lot more often.
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Maybe one of the reasons Dida is a World Cup winner is probably because he didn’t even play in the final against Germany! Is it just a coincidence that once Dida became goalkeeper, Brazil failed to win a World Cup, or is there more to it than just coincidence? Maybe so, but the fact of the matter is that Dida wasn’t the kind of goalkeeper to fill a weak defence with confidence.
Errors against the likes of Leeds United, where he fumbled the ball into the net, or against Fiorentina, where he completely misjudged the flight of a cross and allowed the striker to head into an empty net prove that Dida wasn’t a good goalkeeper, let alone a great one.
#1 Fabien Barthez
The former Manchester United man won a host of trophies in football, including a World Cup, European Championship, Ligue 1, and a Premier League winner’s medal, yet he still isn’t named as one of the greatest goalkeepers. His time at United was littered with mistakes and errors that occasionally cost his side the three points.
His reactionary saves were his high point, but racing off his line and diving at the feet of forwards cost his team at vital times, including in the Champions League against Deportivo La Coruna and, against Arsenal in the Premier League at Highbury.
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His mistakes in big games highlighted the weaknesses of the Frenchman, including an incident against West Ham United where he claimed that Paulo Di Canio was offside, and allowed the striker to fire home with no one to stop him.
His World Cup campaign back in 1998 for France showed that he could do well and play for a big club, but when he was brought in to replace the legendary Peter Schmeichel at Manchester United, it all seemed to go very wrong, very quickly for Barthez.
At Marseille and Monaco previously, he was actually a decent enough goalkeeper and at times once can see why Sir Alex Ferguson brought him in on a six-year-deal, but his high-profile mistakes were just too much.
