How Football Teams Use A Secret Loophole To Get A “Fake Goalkeeper”

FourFourTwo

Pressure to get results in the EFL means clubs are thinking outside the box. By exploiting a loophole in the emergency goalkeeper loan rule, they've found a clever but controversial way to save them money.

Transcript

00:00The role of the number two goalkeeper changes depending on the size of the club. For the very

00:07biggest teams, such as the money and data poured into choosing a number one, anyone brought in

00:11below is expected to sit tight, stay fit and enjoy their annual run-out in the early rounds of the

00:16Carabao Cup. Further down the Premier League, there's also often the chance to displace the

00:20regular custodian, be the form or fitness, eventually work in your favour. The unfancied

00:24Jason Steele unseated Robert Sanchez at Brighton last season, largely because of his better work

00:28with the ball at his feet. But scale down the footballing pyramid to where every single

00:32penny counts, and the number two goalkeeper is slowly, quietly, becoming a controversial

00:37topic in football. Men sign not to play second fiddle, but specifically to exploit a loophole

00:42in the rules by not playing at all. This is the rise of the fake number two goalkeeper.

00:49Daniel Gili is a former Hungarian under-21 goalkeeper. Now 26, he's just been released

00:53by National League side Maidenhead United. Ten years ago, a promising career lay in front

00:58of him. He moved to England from Hungary and signed for then Premier League club Stoke City.

01:02He began playing for their under-21 and under-18 sides, all the while earning caps for Hungary's

01:07international youth teams up to under-21 level. In 2016 and 2017, he was loaned to local non-league

01:12side Nantwich Town and played a total of eight games there. In 2018, Stoke were relegated to

01:17the championship. At this stage, Daniel is 21 and hasn't played a minute of senior football

01:21in the English Football League. And that's just two EFL trophy games on his CV.

01:25At the end of Stoke's first season in the championship, they finished 16th, Daniel was

01:28released. Wigan signed him. He was named on the bench by the Lattics four times in the

01:322019-20 season, but didn't play a single minute of football. Wigan released him and he signed

01:37for Peterborough in League One and was named their number two goalkeeper for the 2020-21 season.

01:42After 39 appearances on the bench for Posh, their number one goalkeeper, Christy Pym, picked

01:46up an injury. Finally, Daniel's big chance? No. Why? Because he is a fake number two goalkeeper.

01:53Instead of handing their young Hungarian number two his first ever minutes of senior football,

01:56Peterborough chose to activate the EFL's emergency goalkeeper loan clause. This allows them to bring

02:01in a replacement goalkeeper with more experience on loan for seven days because they had no

02:05professional goalkeepers available in the eyes of the EFL. Crucially, the EFL's definition

02:10of a professional goalkeeper is a goalkeeper, excluding any goalkeeper registered as a non-contract

02:15player, who has been named in the starting XI on five or more occasions by any club or

02:19a Premier League club in any matches in the relevant league or first-team cup competitions

02:24other than the EFL trophy. Emergency goalkeeper loans last a week, but can be extended in weekly

02:29increments. At this stage, Daniel is 24 and has made zero appearances in a professional league

02:34or cup game. The loophole meant he remained on Peterborough's bench, with Joe Bursic joining

02:38on emergency loan from, oh, cruel irony, Stoke City.

02:42To make matters worse, Bursic is three years younger than Daniel and had played 15 games

02:47in League One via a loan to Doncaster that season. Bursic was actually recalled by Stoke

02:52that season during a goalkeeping crisis and played 10 further championship games for them,

02:56a dizzying 25 senior games to his name, comfortably qualifying him as a professional goalkeeper

03:00in the eyes of the EFL. Football is cruel, and it got crueler for Daniel. That summer he was

03:06put on the transfer list by Peterborough and frozen out of the team, not even appearing on the bench.

03:10Then, just after Christmas, he was loaned to Maidenhead United in National League. After two games,

03:15he signed permanently. At last, regular football, albeit in non-league.

03:20Things were going well until disaster struck in April this year when he sustained an ACL injury.

03:24It means he's unlikely to play football again until 2024. What's worse is the fact he will have to start

03:29without a club as Maidenhead released him at the beginning of June. After all, what non-league

03:34club can afford to pay an injured player for six months? There are other examples of fake number

03:38twos if you look closely. In 2021-22, Connor Ripley was signed for Salford from Preston on an emergency

03:43loan that was extended four times. He played seven games for Salford and once in the FA Cup.

03:49Zach G. Cock was the fake number two in this instance, and even more intriguing is that he was a loaned-in

03:54fake number two, having been signed on loan by Salford for the season from Birmingham. G. Cock

03:59returned to Birmingham towards the end of the 2021-22 season and played two first-team games,

04:04conceding ten goals. Now 22, he has just 24 games on his CV, but only a handful of these are in the

04:10AFL. The rest are non-league appearances. You could argue he's miles off first-team football at any

04:15professional level and way behind where a 22-year-old keeper with his talent could be.

04:20Goalkeeping structure has changed. Fake number twos are likely to become more common while the

04:24emergency loan option exists. The clause is actually designed in theory to protect inexperienced

04:29young goalkeepers from being thrown in the deep end in the AFL, but it's also potentially taking

04:34crucial senior minutes away from slightly older goalkeepers like Daniel G. Oli and Zach G. Cock.

04:39Host of the GK Union podcast, Matt Beadle points out that incredibly, Grimsby didn't have a number

04:44two goalkeeper in their matchday squad for most of their games last season. Beadle also predicts

04:49that soon most League One and League Two number one goalkeepers will be loaned in from the Premier

04:53League and Championship. In the Premier League, clubs will have a strong number one, a strong

04:57number two, and more recently a semi-strong and ultimately reliable number three, he explains.

05:02High-profile examples of reliable number threes this season include Manchester City's Scott

05:06Carson and Marcus Bettinelli at Chelsea. However, with less money naturally available in the third and

05:11fourth tiers, less resources are forthcoming. As a result, the depth of the goalkeeping department is

05:16naturally compromised. Imagine the goalkeeping budget for a League Two club is £2,500 a week.

05:22That club could sign two decent goalkeepers, one on £1,500 a week and the other on £1,000 a week,

05:27granting a certain level of assurance. Or they could exploit the emergency loan system, utilise a large

05:33share of the budget on a very strong number one and stick a fake number two on the bench. Low budgets

05:38plus pressure for results make this an increasing trend. Harry Eistedd is a goalkeeper who you could argue has

05:43finally escaped the limbo of the fake number two role. He was loaned to Barnsley from Luton this

05:48January, having played less than five EFL games in a very malnourished career. He turned 26 in March.

05:53Eistedd performed well at Barnsley, almost helping them seal promotion to the Championship via the

05:57playoffs and was unofficial man of the match in the final versus Sheffield Wednesday, making an

06:01incredible save in extra time. But the Daniel GLIs and Zach G Cox remain victims of the EFL's emergency loan rule.

06:09It's tough for goalkeepers like them to leave a club and gain valuable experience elsewhere,

06:13because the reality is their lack of experience can be an advantage to a club. It provides a certain

06:17veil of protection should the number one get injured during a game, but you can bet the next day the

06:22club will be calling the EFL to activate the emergency loan clause to protect their fake number two if

06:27their number one is going to be out for a number of games. Young goalkeepers are seeing out stopgap contracts

06:32and then being released for copycat successors. Sure, they've had involvement in a professional

06:37environment but their CV boasts a big fat zero next to professional appearances. What follows is an

06:42inevitable drop into non-league in a bid to start the journey again. But fail to perform at that level

06:47or even worse get injured and the dream of professional football can quickly slip through a

06:51callkeeper's hands.

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