The Outsider

'Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying aces, an object of thrilled adulation. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender.' Nabokov (quoted here), Camus, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Julian Barnes, and not forgetting Pope John Paul II, William 'Fatty' Foulkes and Peter Handke's The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick... It's safe to say the goalkeeper hasn't always been a team player.

In this first ever cultural history of the 'loner' between the posts, Jonathan Wilson travels to the bassa region of Cameroon, which has produced two of Africa's greatest keepers and also to Romania to talk to Helmuth Duckadam, who saved four penalties for Steaua Bucharest in the 1986 European Cup Final.

In The Outsider, Jonathan Wilson traces the sometimes dangerous intellectual and literary preoccupations of the keeper, and looks at how the position has secured a certain existential cool. His absorbing tactical and technical insights into football history take us back to the days when matches were contested without a keeper. The Outsider will delight all admirers of the prize-winning Inverting the Pyramid.