The logic is of course very straightforward.
A football club has a first choice goalkeeper who gets the majority of the fixtures in league, cup and European competitions. The second choice goalkeeper is back-up to the number one in case of injury and will mostly play his games in the reserve side. He might also get a run of games in the lesser cup competitions as well as the odd European game if the club has done so well in the group stage that the last couple of games are a formality rather than must win.
However when it comes to having a third choice goalkeeper, the logic isn’t there.
They are back up to the first and second choice goalies getting on the sub-bench if the second choice gets a game but apart from rarely sees any action unless both goalkeepers are out of action.
So why someone like Chelsea‘s third choice Henrique Hilario has signed a on year contract extension to keep him at Stamford Bridge until 2013 is unexplainable – except to see out his playing days doing very little but still getting well paid.
In the six years Hilario has been at the Blues he has made only 39 appearances and four of those were from the substitute’s bench. It is not surprising as Petr Cech, one of the best goalkeepers in the world, has been ever-present in the Chelsea goal rarely missing a fixture except in the 2006-07 season with his horrific head injury kept him out of three months.
Plus it is not like he is not used to being a club’s main goalkeeper as he has been that for several clubs including Academica and Nacional. So if Hilario was to leave Chelsea he could easily be the first choice for many clubs over Europe.
And Chelsea are not alone many of the Premier League’s top club have third choice keepers; Liverpool have Brad Jones, the former Middlesbrough number one, Manchester City have a third choice (Gunnar Nielsen) and fourth choice (Stuart Taylor).
Manchester United have Ben Amos as their third and did have Tomasz Kuszczak as a fourth until he saw the light and moved straight into between the sticks at Watford on loan and Arsenal have Manuel Almunia who did spend a brief month at West Ham United earlier this season.
So except the goalkeepers who have managed to escape to play some regular football on loan, the others have had to go through training every day without hope of getting any game time.
Why would a goalkeeper accept that?
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