(This article is from The Square Ball magazine, 2019/20 issue 06. Check out the rest here.)

Wembley, May 1996, and the spectre of penalties loomed over the play-off final between Leicester City and Crystal Palace. Half an hour of extra time had failed to separate the teams and Palace had used all three subs; Leicester, two. As Leicester won a free kick on halfway, Martin O’Neill nodded to a hulking figure, hunched on the bench. “Spider. You’re up.”

The legs of Zeljko “Spider” Kalac emerged from the dugout, followed shortly by the rest of him. He raised himself to his full height of six foot eight, and flexed. Ten months previously the Australian international goalkeeper and penalty specialist had turned down a move to Leeds United after Leicester promised him first team football, a promise they had not kept. Off came Kevin Poole and on came Kalac.

“Zeljko said, ‘don’t worry, I’ll win it for you’,” recounted O’Neill, some years later. “And, to this day, some of the Crystal Palace players say that they were actually disturbed by the substitution taking place.”

Kalac was correct, just not in the way he expected. The sudden emergence of this behemoth broke Palace’s concentration for a moment, and the free kick was nodded into the path of Steve Claridge, who did the rest. It was the final kick of the game. Leicester were promoted to the Premier League, and Kalac entered club folklore without even touching the ball.

That’s the funny thing about cult heroes; sometimes you don’t have to do much to become one. Ten seconds was all it took for Kalac to achieve cult status (and as a side note, Palace’s failure to win promotion resulted in the departure of their goalie, Nigel Martyn, to Leeds).

It feels lazy to compare Illan Meslier, the spidery figure currently lurking on the Leeds bench, with Zeljko Kalac, but as this club flirts dangerously with the play-offs the parallels become harder to ignore. His penalty record for the U23s demands attention: faced three, saved three. And it’s not hard to see why. Penalties are a psychological tussle between striker and goalkeeper, and no-one wants to take a penalty against a goalie who looks like he can touch both goalposts at once.

Tall goalies are nothing new, but it’s Meslier’s unusual proportioning that makes him such a formidable opponent. He’s forty per cent arms and fifty per cent legs, with an ethereal, slender body and, most disquieting of all, the freckled face of a thirteen year old perched on top like a golf ball. If he wandered onscreen halfway through The Nightmare Before Christmas you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. And that’s not even the best thing about him.

The law of the playground, which governs every park kickabout, decrees that the position of goalkeeper goes to either the biggest player or the worst one. Frequently these turn out to be the same luckless kid, fuelling an assumption that goalies (particularly the comically large ones) are all failed outfield players with unfulfilling sex lives. Imagine Arsenal’s surprise, then, when a teenage goalkeeper who appeared to be modelled out of pipe cleaners turned up at the Emirates and immediately started spraying passes around like Dennis Bergkamp.

Watching Meslier against Arsenal was like watching a bumblebee take flight; someone that shape shouldn’t be physically able to manipulate a football like that. Arsenal, a team famed for the elegance of their play, looked spooked, and began packing the six yard box like a pub team on Hackney Marshes, pinning the Frenchman on his line. Meslier looked singularly unconcerned throughout, and was only denied a clean sheet by a scruffy close range finish.

Of course, the thing about backup goalies is that they only get their chance in the event of misfortune befalling the club’s number 1, and it’s therefore impossible to talk about Meslier without a sideways glance at Kiko Casilla, whose performances have ranged greatly in quality this year. Dropping the club’s highest earner is likely to be difficult politically, assuming the FA hasn’t taken the decision out of our hands by the time this goes to press. However, with the option to buy Meslier rumoured to be around £4.5m and Casilla drawing a wage in excess of £30k a week, the likelihood is that one or the other will depart this summer. And, unfortunately for Kiko, I’m not sure I can live without seeing Illan Meslier play for Leeds again, and not just a Kalac-style cameo. He looks better than that — much better — and even if he isn’t then at least we won’t have to grapple with the eternal torment of never knowing.

If Meslier departs without making another appearance, his cult status is secure. He’ll never be tested against boggy Lancashire pitches, and hostile crowds, and Gary Madine. He will remain an ideal; a player whose sole appearance was sufficiently interesting to leave us forever wondering ‘what if’.

That question will intensify tenfold if we (God forbid) find ourselves in a penalty shootout, and our spider-legged saviour is watching glumly from the bench. ◉

(artwork by Tom Sparke)

(This article is from The Square Ball magazine, 2019/20 issue 06. Check out the rest here.)