In one of the least unpredictable transfers of this summer Liverpool’s troubled (and troubling – the guy clearly needs help) star striker Luis Suarez has moved to Barcelona, no doubt to the benefit of his bank balance. The only question was over his destination. As he made no secret he wished to play in Spain the other option would have been Real Madrid.

Barcelona’s motto, emblazoned on the seats in their stadium, the Camp Nou, is “més que un club” (more than a club.) Such a claim to moral high ground is somewhat undermined by their acquisition of a serial perpetrator of assaults; assaults which if carried out in any other walk of life might have seen their author up before a magistrate.

Suarez’s gifts as a footballer clearly outweigh any consideration of propriety (or indeed of the player’s inner well-being: he is not going to change his behaviour when it is rewarded like this.)

It seems Barcelona is sólo otro club (just another club) after all.

The football legend who has died today had a name that needed no further explanation. He was part of that legendary Real Madrid side that captivated the football followers of Glasgow and Scotland at the European Cup Final of 1960 – played at Hampden Park. di Stéfano scored a hat-trick.

I was too young to be aware of it at the time but the folk memory was promulgated and persists. Such was the effect of that display of what football could be that the names of the forward line still trip off the tongue with no need for googling. Canario, Del Sol, di Stéfano, Puskas and Gento. Mind you, I see film of that game now and think, “Where was the marking?”

One curiosity is that I believe the Eintracht Frankfurt team that formed the opposition that day were all amateurs – as was German football as a whole.

di Stéfano may be unique in having played international football for three different countries, his native Argentina, Colombia, where he played league football for a while, and Spain for whom he was naturalised in 1956. That was the type of scenario that I thought had been resolved by FIFA with its rules on eligibility but in the recent World Cup one of the commentators remarked that Kevin-Prince Boateng who played for Ghana in the tournament had previously played for Germany (but not, it seems, for the senior side.)

The World Cup was one stage that di Stéfano did not grace, for various reasons, but his thirteen national titles (two in Argentina, three in Colombia and no less than eight in Spain) and five European Cups – not to mention his scoring record – speak for themselves.

Alfredo Stéfano di Stéfano Laulhé: 4/7/1926 – 7/7/2014. So it goes.

Orion, 2012, 351 p

If football is symbolic, if the ball is a substitute sun requiring to be buried (in the goal) to ensure fertility, what then are we to make of the one player in the team whose primary object is to prevent that desirable consummation? Such is the question with which Wilson starts his history of the goalkeeper, who in this context can be seen as the outsider, an anti-footballer.

While not denying the goalkeeper’s essential difference I immediately started thinking, what about the stopper centre half, the holding midfielder, the midfield destroyer? Aren’t their roles equally anti-football in that sense? Of course these players may advance into the opponents’ half, even score the odd goal or two, but the goalkeeper generally isn’t expected/permitted even to do that. Except what, then, to make of the Paraguayan great, Jose Luis Chilavert, who took penalties and free-kicks and scored 62 goals, 8 of them for Paraguay and all while playing as a goalkeeper? (Brazil’s Rogério Ceni has since overtaken Chilavert as the highest scoring keeper.) The South American attitude to goalkeepers has tended to be less restrictive, though. In Europe keepers generally only charge upfield in desperate circumstances.

In any case Wilson’s title partly goes against the thrust of the history. When football was first codified it started with all players able to handle the ball in certain circumstances. That dispensation quickly became restricted to the designated one, who was detached from the team – and made to stand out by virtue of wearing a different coloured jersey/shirt. A gradual process of goalkeepers playing beyond the penalty area – the change of rules in 1912 which forbade handling outside the box (up till then they had been allowed to anywhere in their own half) delayed this process – by intervening with their feet or initiating attacks has reduced this difference. Arguably the keeper’s reintegration into the team was finally more or less institutionalised by the back pass rule. (Even before that, though, the custodian was not totally estranged, was a vital component of retaining possession. I remember reading elsewhere that Liverpool’s long domination of the European Cup was predicated on passing the ball back to Bruce Grobbelaar as much as possible during away legs. The sweeper-keeper had evolved even prior to this, though.) In Jose Luis Chilavert’s case the reintegration of keeper with team was surely at its most complete.

Wilson mentions that the first ‘Prince of Goalkeepers’ was Dumbarton’s James McAulay. Another Sons keeper to be mentioned in the text is Joshua Wilkinson, whose father was convinced his death from peritonitis in 1921 was due to a blow he’d received in a game against Rangers the previous Saturday.

In the very early days it had been almost open season on goalkeepers. The famous William ‘Fatty’ Foulke – reputedly 28st (179 kilograms) when he played for Chelsea – often took his revenge on physical forwards, turning them upside down and depositing them on their heads. Despite the obvious dangers – Celtic’s John Thomson (to whom a section of Kirkcaldy’s newly refurbished museum is dedicated – he came from nearby Cardenden – there was also a tribute to him there before the modernisation) received an accidental but fatal knee to the head in 1931 also against Rangers; Sunderland’s Jim Thorpe died in 1936 after several blows in a physical game in 1936 prompted a reccurence of a diabetic condition – it was not until after Bert Trautman’s broken neck and several other injuries to keepers in FA Cup finals in the 1950s, though, that British goalkeepers began to receive extended protection from referees.

Goalkeeping is not, in the end, a simple business. He/she is not necessarily only a shot stopper; there is a difference between the reactive keeper and the proactive. The former expects to make saves (spectacular or mundane) the latter’s best game is the one in which she/he has no saves to make at all, because the way he/she has organised the defence ensures, in an ideal world, that no danger occurs.

There are even national differences in approach. Both Brazilian and Italian defences tend to play deeply and so breed reactive keepers. In other countries a higher line is adopted, a goalkeeper’s play has to be more attuned to that. In Russia, Soviet Russia in particular, goalkeepers have been the subject of a reverence that borders on love.

Africa is represented here by the Cameroonians Tommy Nkono (who inspired Gianluigi Buffon) and Joseph-Antoine Bell, the Spanish, German, Italian, English, Brazilian, Scottish and US traditions are covered in detail. From Asia only Ali Al-Habsi gets a mention and that in passing. Oceanian custodians escape Wilson’s purview completely. Maybe no notable keepers have as yet been bred there.

So many great goalkeepers seem to have had unfortunate debuts, on the end of drubbings of various sorts. What distinguishes them all is that they are liable to be remembered, their careers defined, not for their great performances but for one, or – in the case of David Seaman – two mistakes. (My abiding memory of Ray Clemence is of him allowing a soft one from Kenny Dalglish to evade him in a Scotland-England game at Hampden. Proof if any were needed that there is no national tendency to persistently outstanding goalkeeping.) Poor Moacyr Barbosa of Brazil was forever blighted by conceding the winning goal in the 1950 World Cup final. In 1970 a woman in a shop said to her young son, “Look! There’s the man who made all Brazil cry.” Barbosa himself later complained that in Brazil, “the maximum sentence is 30 years. My imprisonment has been for 50.” That loss to Uruguay was perhaps, though, the single most traumatic moment in Brazil’s history as a nation. It was only founded in 1889 and has never fought a war.* Brazilians apparently are not really football fans. It is winning they like.

Wilson makes the point that the existence of a highly proficient one or two goalkeepers from one country at one time is not evidence of strength in depth, nor any guarantee of continued excellence. The apparent decline of English goalkeeping is a case in point.

The author certainly knows his football history – there is even a digression into the treatments of the sport in literature and film, most of which lean heavily on the goalkeeper; a further nice touch is that the book’s back cover is decorated with a “1” – and he thinks deeply about the game. Having read the book I’ll observe goalkeeping in a different light.

One final note. Even if a book is about football it might be thought a touch insensitive to describe the Spanish Civil War as “perhaps the clásico to end them all” – even more insensitive when Wilson observes that Real Madrid didn’t become Franco’s team till the 1940s.

*Edited to add. I have since found out that this is only true of the Brazilian Republic and not of the Empire which preceded it.

Manchester Utd 1-2 Real Madrid (aggregate 2-3)

UEFA Champions League*, Old Trafford, 5/3/13

This game, of course, hinged on the sending off. Up to that point United had been marginally the better, certainly David De Gea in United’s goal had fewer saves to make. Actually, even afterwards Diego Lopez in Real’s goal made more saves but Real were in the lead by then and not pushing forward so much. They could even have afforded to lose a goal.

It looked to me like Nani had tried to get the ball, there was no intent to foul – but intent does not come into the law. As Roy Keane argued in the post match discussion Nani’s foot was raised, ergo it was dangerous, worthy of a red card.

This immediately invites a question.

Why, then, when a player takes down any high ball (or indeed executes a bicycle kick) is it not dangerous play? His foot is at least at chest height, as Nani’s was. Are such instances of control of a high ball now all to be banished? In which case Brian Prunty’s much You-Tubed (and sublime) opener for Dumbarton against Livingston a few weeks ago would have been chalked off as dangerous. Should it also have been accorded a red card?

The only difference is the possible nearby presence of another player. But Nani wasn’t aware (till too late) there was a player coming in, he was looking at the flight of the ball. Roy Keane suggested he should be alive to such a possibility, he must expect a challenge. This, though, would also apply to any attempt to play a high ball as above.

Surely, equally, a player is entitled to attempt to control, or pass, the ball in the most effective way?

Nani’s control of the ball arguably wasn’t dangerous or reckless in itself. What may have made it so was the incoming player.

The thing is; it also looked to me like the Real player was never likely to get to the ball first. He was aware of what Nani might attempt to do and yet still came in to make contact with Nani’s foot after Nani had played the ball. In other words the Real player came in late. If Nani had played the ball on the ground and then been impacted the foul would have gone the other way for a late challenge. So who was in the wrong? From one point of view the Real player deliberately ran into a foot he knew was going to be high in order to make it look like dangerous play. In other words he bought the red card. Which is a form of cheating.

The ref and assistants have only real time to make decisions. They do not have the benefit of replays. But even in real time Nani’s high foot did not seem to me to be a sending off offence. But can anyone else be entirely sure what went into the ref’s decision making processes?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this we will never know what would have happened if the red card had not been issued. Real might have scored twice anyway. But United might also have scored again, they made chances even with ten men.

Given the stories floating around about match-fixing there is now an element of doubt about such high profile matches. (And possibly low profile ones as well.) It is unfortunate that a refereeing decision appeared to be central to the outcome of this game.

In an unrelated point I thought that Ronaldo might have been just offside when the cross was hit in for Real’s second goal in that a scoring part of his body was beyond the last defender. None of the replays focused on this and it was given no analysis. Strange that.

* so-called

UEFA Champions League (sic) semi-final, first leg, Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, Madrid, 27/4/11

This season’s quarter-finals notwithstanding, matches in the so-called Champions League are frequently sterile affairs with teams tending to cancel each other out. There is perhaps too much at stake for the football to be anything but efficient and relatively unimaginative.

This exemplified the trend. This was unedifying watching at best, ugly at worst. A petty, ill-tempered, niggly, fractious affair. A playground tiff interrupted by flashes of football. The residue of too many games between these two in the recent past I suppose.

The play-acting was reprehensible and the questioning of the referee’s decisions went too far; not to mention him being mobbed at times. And as for players asking officials to show cards – red or yellow – to opponents, well it’s about time this was made an offence in itself. If I was a ref I’d be tempted to treat it as dissent and act accordingly. But then I suppose a ref who did this would not stay a ref for long.

In the end we got three sendings off – one of a player who, due to a fight among the subs at half time, never even set foot on the pitch!

The home side played defensively – and still lost. They might also have lost if they had tried to attack but the spectacle would have been more bearable. Whether the imbalance of numbers made the telling difference to the result is of course difficult to assess.

As it was Jose Mourinho’s tactics were far from what the name of Real Madrid is supposed to stand for, a betrayal of the club’s attacking traditions.

The beautiful game this was not.

Except for one flash of genius which wasn’t enough to redeem what had gone before.

No ref, no game. (Bob Marley should have written that.)

It’s a farce isn’t it? The SFL brought to a standstill because of a dispute in which it is not involved. (As far as I’m aware no SFL club has complained of any referee bias against them – or even of incompetence.)

Yet the SPL, one of whose members it is which is causing all the fuss, has its games go ahead?

Okay our game might have been off anyway due to the weather but the prime reason is the referee’s strike.

I see from this report that the Polish refs whom the SFA was going to bring in have also called off. Pity; I was wondering what the Polish for, “Who’s the mason in the black?” is.

I saw Mark McGhee on BBC Scotland on Thursday night saying that it was a dangerous precedent, what if the foreign refs turn out to be better than ours.

I don’t think Scottish refs are perfect but I also don’t think they are biased or corrupt, merely mistaken at times – as are all refs.

So what, Mark, if the foreign refs are worse?

That might actually tell us something.

It would be marvellously ironic if today Celtic were on the wrong end of an important decision. But if they are on the right end of one it proves nothing – beyond the possibility that the ref just doesn’t fancy an earful from Neil Lennon, or snide blustering from a certain Dr John Reid.

Let me be clear. All clubs suffer from poor decisions at times. Yet it is simply ridiculous for either of the Old Firm to say they do not benefit in the majority of cases in Scotland.

A similar situation occurs for all big clubs everywhere. (Manchester United rarely have penalty awards given against them at Old Trafford. I have no doubt Real Madrid benefit from this effect in Spain.) In Europe it is the Old Firm who are small beer and suffer accordingly.

As things stand it seems Celtic’s management now have what they wanted; an atmosphere in which decisions against Celtic cannot be made for fear of the consequences.

The SFA has not been strong in this. Member clubs should be told only to question decisions via the SFA and not the media. Persistent complaints, such as those we have seen, should engender a points deduction.

Club managers should be banned from the touchline for the remainder of the season (or half the next if in March, April or May) for any nose-to-nose confrontations with match officials. Players mobbing the ref should mean a club fine.

I’m not holding my breath for any of that to happen to either of the Old Firm.