Black Goalkeepers, Big Clubs and Europe’s Uneven Playing Field

LouisianaViking07/09 · Nov 24, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/sports/soccer/champions-league-black-goalkeepers.html

Startlingly, troublingly, these may be the only two games in the Champions League this season in which both teams played a Black goalkeeper: Édouard Mendy, the 28-year-old acquired by Chelsea in September, and Alfred Gomis, the man who replaced him at Rennes.

Few sports are quite the level playing fields they believe themselves to be. Black quarterbacks were once as rare in the N.F.L. as Black entrants were at tennis championships and golf majors. Soccer, like so many other sports, still struggles for Black representation in leadership roles: There are few Black managers, and even fewer Black executives.

If a goalkeeper is good enough, Kameni said, one of Europe’s major clubs will sign him, and he uses Mendy’s arrival at Chelsea as supporting evidence. To Kameni, the problem is much simpler. “There are not enough Black goalkeepers who are good enough,” he said over a series of WhatsApp messages.

Those two things, though, are not unconnected. The problem, Hislop said, is not only that coaches are less likely to give aspiring Black goalkeepers a chance to showcase their talents, but that Black players have fewer role models offering proof that they can succeed. “They do not have an example to follow,” he said.

He is, at least, hopeful. He sees a raft of promising Black goalkeepers in the United States, a country and a soccer culture where Howard, Bill Hamid, Sean Johnson and now Steffen have effectively killed off the stereotype, and where Philadelphia’s Andre Blake — a Jamaica international — was just named Major League Soccer’s goalkeeper of the year.

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LouisianaViking07/09 · Nov 24, 2020

A worthy topic since several NT keepers are mentioned.

adam tash · Nov 24, 2020

Haven't read the article but I'm surprised a Euro team hasn't come in for Andre Blake yet....he's really really good....and there's a lot of bad GK in EU imo

nobody · Nov 24, 2020

Interesting article and absolutely something that has been noticeable over time. Very few top jobs go to black goalies. The best that I recall off the top of my head would be Nkono from Cameroon and that was quite a while ago and even while he proved himself internationally over and over and played at a high level in La Liga, he never got a chance at a mega club. Our own Tim Howard is certainly one of the standard bearers in this category. David James from England although he had a spotty time of it and I'm not going to say none of his treatment from the press was driven by the color of his skin.