The conversation was a conversation of faith. “Remember: penance, anointing of the sick and marriage,” says one. “And at the end: for the father, the son and the holy spirit. I think we have it, right?”, responds the other. The couple, two teenagers no more than 15 years old, sit on the 55 bus heading to Atocha and review the lesson they will have to repeat in the afternoon at church. Uniformed, with a blue tracksuit and the backpacks of an amateur soccer team, both radically change gears once they accept God as known. “And the game, how do you see it?” comments the tallest one. “You know, I’m the third goalie. “I don’t play,” says the little boy. “Don’t believe that, even if they tell you,” his partner advises him shortly before getting off the bus.
Immobility in the goal is not just a thing of professional teams. In lower categories, even those of the lowest competitive level, coaches choose their starting goalkeeper, their second and their third goalkeeper at the beginning of the season. A decision that is maintained in many cases until the end if the results are favorable. There is no regulation that requires that all children must play a minimum number of games. Anyone who has experienced it will know that there comes a time when the third goalkeeper must believe his own lies and create an almost divine illusion that things will change, that meritocracy will prevail sooner or later and opportunities will arrive. He cannot say it too loudly or claim himself before anyone, since at the end of the day who is he but the third goalkeeper.
In the middle of the desert of not playing for a minute, the third goalkeeper learns a very valuable thing: to make efforts only for himself. Not expecting anything in return and still doing it. What else is left? He tries to imagine a fictitious and happy ending so he can begin rowing towards the utopia where his luck ends up being different. While frustration eats away at him.
Educated under the premise “cause-effect”, it is difficult to understand that no matter how well you do, you may not get closer to the future you expect. It will be even more difficult to have enough self-esteem to not collapse. That is the truth of the third goalkeeper: reality is shown crudely and the world is revealed as it will be later, as an adult: a jungle where sacrifice, merit and triumph do not have to go hand in hand. You only need to look up for a moment to see that we are surrounded by third goalkeepers those who may never get their chance.
In the 2023-2024 season, of the 20 teams in the League, only five (Betis, Almería, Mallorca, Granada and Real Madrid) have used their supposed third goalkeepers. Fran Vieites (four games), Marc Martínez (3 games), Cuéllar (two), Diego Mariño (one), and Andriy Lunin (31 games) have been the lucky ones. The case of the Madrid goalkeeper is the most striking. He started as Courtois’ second, he was injured and Madrid signed Kepa, for whom he was also immediately a substitute. When everyone was full, Lunin would clearly be the last in line.
Some articles recently recalled how the Ukrainian asked during the 2020 confinement for artificial grass for his forty-square-meter house so he could train until the season resumed: he would play on loan at second division Oviedo, where he relapsed after spending a blank season. as the third goalkeeper in Real Madrid and two more without pain or glory in Leganés and Valladolid. The boy was on the wire. I like to imagine him in that small apartment with his girlfriend, sweating like a chicken and hitting his balls against the wall. Persisting in the faith that if today he does well, tomorrow too, and so on to the next and the next, he would return to Madrid, where he would finally triumph. I wonder how many believed Andriy’s milkmaid’s accounts. Probably just him.
Lunin landed in London on Saturday at noon to be European champion. He arrived at “The Grove” hotel and greeted his teammates one by one while they were having lunch before playing in the Champions League final that many say the Ukrainian deserved to play in. Andryi could not complete the feat and returned to the bench, this time as second. However, he was on the verge of returning to the starting box when a flu B in the middle of the week almost left him at home, watching the game from the sofa as the standard bearer of all the third goalkeepers in the world after having gone further than no other. “Don’t believe that even if they tell you,” he would tell us if he could.
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