Two days on from another harrowing evening at London Stadium, Joe Hart likely gave a wry smile after seeing Hugo Lloris deny Philippe Coutinho as Spurs beat Liverpool 4-1 at Wembley. Lloris, unsighted by Harry Winks and Davinson Sanchez, reacted splendidly to Coutinho's swirling shot, pushing it up and onto the crossbar.
Several Tottenham players stopped to clap; Kieran Trippier gave his goalkeeper a hearty slap on the back; Wembley echoed with applause.
Forty-eight hours earlier, there had been no applause. Jose Izquierdo had whipped a shot over and around Jose Fonte and into the top corner. Hart reached the ball with his right hand but, unable to sufficiently change its trajectory, succeeded only in ruining the aesthetic and further damaging his reputation. It looked wrong. The old maxim dictates that if a goalkeeper can reach a shot and is able to get that much of a hand on it, he should be saving it. An error, then.
Other than in their result, it's remarkable how similar those two moments were. Both shots were arcing towards goal at roughly the same angle, both goalkeepers used the same technique to reach them, and although Lloris achieved a slightly firmer contact, the ball looped up in almost identical fashion.
It's interesting to consider what the reaction might have been had the Frenchman been a foot further off his line. If that were the case - and all other factors remained equal - the shot would likely have taken the same ugly, Hart-like loop into the net. His reaction time would have been as impressive, his body shape too, and yet in spite of its identical mechanics, a brilliant stop would have become a costly error. Goalkeeping is very binary: either the ball goes in or it doesn't and nobody is ever praised for almost making an excellent save.
Hart and Lloris had very different weekends, but principally because of a tiny difference in luck within a split-second fragment of their respective games. Naturally, both moments provided a strong, conclusive judgement: confirmation that one career was headed for the gutter and that the other, if there had ever been any doubt, remained in the stars.
Much of this is descriptive of how goalkeeping has been publicly analysed over recent decades. There's a strong correlation, for instance, between the dearth of ex-goalkeepers in punditry positions and what would seem to be a public blindspot. That's something gradually being corrected. Player-turned-journalist David Preece consistently provides valuable, illuminating columns on goalkeeping mechanics, but he is very much an exception.
As with every other position on the field, valuable analysis depends on the ability to tell the viewer or listener why or how something has happened, not just that it has. Regrettably, goalkeepers are still just "disappointed" with shots they should save. Being beaten at the near post is always, always a grave mistake. And, as before, getting a "full hand' to the ball must always result in a save.
It’s relevant because it's such an active part of every goal. Conceding always demands an inquest and so, naturally, the first question asked whenever the ball is in the net concerns the goalkeeper's culpability. Could he have done better? Typically, that's also answered with reference to one of the assumed truisms above and generally depends on nothing more scientific than whether or not the goal "looked weird". It's interesting because it's so different. A goalscorer's actions are always lovingly described - his movement off the ball, the shifting of his feet, the purity of the contact. There might even be an ex-player-pundit on hand to explain the advantages of those various micro-actions.
Maybe the great cost of that is the under-estimation of just how difficult goalkeeping is? Its perilous nature may be well established - everyone knows that a mistake generally results in a goal - but the complexity of the position and its reliance on all sorts of variables seem often to be overlooked, with only the established cliches existing as tenets of analysis.
The point, in this instance, isn't necessarily to absolve Joe Hart of any blame for Brighton's second goal on Friday night or to diminish Hugo Lloris's save from Coutinho, but to bemoan the absence of a layered discussion. What was Hart seeing at the point when Izquierdo released his shot? Was he slightly off his line because he was anticipating a through-ball to Glenn Murray (and because he plays behind two pace-less centre-halves)? The spin of the ball - how was that relevant? Are the floodlights at London Stadium in any way prohibitive? Hart certainly looked like he began his dive early, is that because of some difficulty in judging trajectory?
Was it that timing which caused the ball to loop up as it did, or the positioning of his fingers?
Equally, although obviously positive and the kind of incident worth dwelling upon, there's been little assessment of Lloris' save either. A nuanced discussion might reveal how a goalkeeper in his position is able to track the ball while being unsighted by his defenders - is there a method, or does making that kind of save rely solely on reaction speed?
It all sounds terribly fanciful, especially given that goalkeeping is still seen as a niche topic within the game. But when you consider the volume of articles written about the position and the debates which froth whenever an incumbent loses form, it's telling that so few theories are offered which explain the respective causes.
When Wayne Rooney was approaching his England retirement and nearing the end of his time in Manchester United, almost every performance he gave was analysed in excruciating detail. His positional trends were noted, signs of reticence were ascribed tremendous meaning and all kinds of solutions were proposed. But Hart's situation with England - and latterly West Ham - is entirely different: the response has just been a shrug of the shoulders, some mutterings about a loss of form, and a couple of vague theories about weakness down his left side.
Good save. Bad mistake. Solid goalkeeper. Hopeless goalkeeper. Maybe the reason there never seems to be anything between those definitives is the absence of a vocabulary which would allow something to exist.
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