Eduardo Chillida was going to be Arconada before Arconada was born. The sculptor was already a superlative goalkeeper at Real Sociedad at the age of 19, but a tackle by Sañudo in a match against Valladolid – the last of the season – destroyed his knee and cut short his signing for Real Madrid in 1943. The adventure went awry, but it transformed the experience as an archer into art. “The goalkeeper has to develop a series of very special conditions of very fast and very immediate space-time intuitions related to these two mysteries, space and time, which make me think that the conditions needed to be a good goalkeeper and a good sculptor are practically the same,” he explained to his daughter Susana Chillida Belzunce for a documentary.
The goalkeepers are artists who live in that dihedral that forms the area that Chillida was talking about, a unique place on the field because it sculpts a unique vision of what happens in three different places at the same time. They operate on a different emotional frequency, often melancholic. The goalkeeper’s fear of the penaltythe legendary book by Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke, written in 1970, focused on Josef Bloch, that fictional goalkeeper, a symbol of that isolation and loneliness in the crucial moments of life. It is no coincidence that the goalkeeper is the only one who dresses differently – with the referee – and who can see the entire game from his area. Also the only one capable of more directly determining the fate of a match with its successes or errors. Not to mention those of Barcelona, destined by philosophical contract to play with their feet 30 meters from the goal, paying the defibrillator to the stands. The man without hands, as Johan Cruyff baptized him in one of his accurate boutades.
Barça has gotten into a big mess with the injury of Ter Stegen, who did not have a substitute because he did not want to. The club let Arnau, a great goalkeeper more culé than Joan Gaspart, leave for PSG, and has two great kids in the youth team, but without experience. Of Iñaki Peña, although Flick does not say it clearly, it seems that they do not trust him too much. The defeat against Osasuna was not his fault, but he was shot five times between the three sticks and four scored. Barça, on the other hand, shot six times and scored twice (Sergio Herrera, beyond the error with Pau Víctor, saved two clear ones). In the Champions League, shots on goal are reduced to around four per game. Like everything, it could also be seen the other way around. But stopping two or three of those shots makes a difference.
Barcelona’s planning in goal has been very debatable. Nobody understands now how it could be that Ter Stegen did not have a substitute in whom the coach fully trusted. A good replacement is essential, as was Lunin last year, who carried Madrid to the final, especially thanks to his penalty shootout at the Etihad. Life was unfair to the Ukrainian, as it usually is to goalkeepers, and he did not play in the final. As much as it can be now with Iñaki Peña, who will see a retired goalkeeper, the Polish Szczęsny, compete for his place.
The difference between a team that wins the Champions League and the one that loses it — this could also be a syllogism cruyffist— is usually between the three suits. Real Madrid, for example, won the ninth thanks to a 21-year-old Iker Casillas, who started the match against Bayer Leverkusen as a substitute and came off in the 61st minute due to César’s injury. In 90 seconds he stopped three balls – especially the one that stopped Berbatov from the ground – that gave him the orejona to the team that Vicente del Bosque was then coaching. Or the one that Madrid won against Liverpool thanks to Karius’ mistakes, almost the entire game was groggy due to the blow that Sergio Ramos gave him, damaging, precisely, that spatial vision that Chillida spoke of. Poor Karius, by the way, disappeared forever after that. Maybe now I’m a sculptor.
