After Antonin Kinsky’s Spurs woes at Atlético, we recall five more matches the keeper in question would sooner forget
The score at the City Ground was goalless as Manchester City’s Andy Dibble captured an aerial cross and assessed his options. Little did he know that the Nottingham Forest midfielder Gary Crosby had spotted that he had rested the ball, casually, on one hand. “All I thought was: ‘He’s got to have it in two hands,’” said Crosby, who would steal up behind Dibble before stooping to head the ball out of his grasp and tap into the net. Despite concerted visiting protestations, the referee, Roger Gifford, remained unmoved and the goal stood. “I can never escape it,” admitted Dibble in an interview 14 years later. Crosby, meanwhile, has said: “It’s the one thing I get remembered for.” Dibble, now 60, retired from professional football in October when knee replacement surgery prompted his departure from his role as Accrington Stanley’s goalkeeping coach. He played for 18 clubs in a 24-year career that earned him three Wales caps.
René Higuita was a goalkeeper ahead of his time: a sweeper-keeper in an era when they were still to be formally “invented”. The Colombian known as El Loco – or the Madman – prided himself on his footwork but it went horribly wrong for him in this World Cup last-16 game. Having advanced close to the halfway line, Higuita was dispossessed by the 38-year-old striker Roger Milla and watched in horror as Milla deposited the ball in the unguarded net to score his second extra-time goal in a 2-1 Cameroon victory. “It was a mistake as big a house,” conceded the brilliant yet notoriously risk-taking Higuita. In a time before routine video analysis of opponents, Milla had received a helping hand. “I was lucky as I’d played with Carlos Valderrama, Colombia’s captain, at Montpellier,” he said. “Carlos showed us videos of Higuita dribbling the ball out of his area and I knew I might be able to take advantage of a mistake. It worked.”
