Tactically Naive: Majestically bad goalkeeping plus The Magic of The Cup (TM)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Tactically Naive, SB Nation’s weekly soccer column. This week we’re mostly trying to identify Sander Berge.

Many goals owe their existence to a poor decision. A mis-timed tackle here, a wonky offside line there, and suddenly the ball is in the net and the game has turned and everybody is staring at you. Look what you did.

But the quick-moving, fluid nature of football means that very few players get to drop two hideous clangers in the space of one goal. A special weekend for Roma goalkeeper Pau López, then, who managed to disgrace himself twice in barely a second.

Still, it’s not like it was an important game or anything. Only the derby. Only Lazio.

It really is worth taking some time to appreciate just how carefully constructed this catastrophe was. All comes from the best intentions, of course. He sees danger, and he knows that he can help. He can use his hands, where others can’t. He’s basically a superhero.

Look, here he comes now, trying to punch a ball that’s on its way out anyway. Got to make sure. Get it extra out. Get it …

… oh no, it’s gone straight up in the air and is now heading towards the goal. That’s the last thing SuperGoalie wanted to happen!

But no matter. We go again. Back comes SuperGoalie, ready to punch again. Does he know Chris Smalling is in position, waiting to head clear? No! Would he care? No again! There is a ball and the ball must be punched. Swish …

… oh dear. That man standing there in the blue shirt is about to poke it in.

Tactically Naive is besotted with this goal for two reasons. First, it’s extremely relatable: if you gave us the gloves and asked to keep goal, this is pretty much what it would look like. And we don’t just mean if we were playing with professionals. No, if we were playing with pros we’d be curled up in a ball in the back of the net, sobbing and begging to be allowed to go home. No. This is us goalkeeping at the standard we belong.

Second, we weren’t joking about the superheroism. This is heroic. Or it’s meant to be. This isn’t a lack of effort, or anything so banal as a miscalculation: this is one man trying to save the world. “It’s OK! I’ve got this!”

He did not, in fact, have that. Or much of anything at all by the time he was done; certainly not his dignity. But that cannot be allowed to detract from the nobility of the action. Here was a man trying to save the world, and the fault here, ultimately, is with reality, for its mean-spirited refusal to play along. Shame on you, reality. Shame.

Over in England, it was the fourth round of the FA Cup, which is why you’re reading this on a Tuesday and not a Monday. Twice this month we’ve delayed Tactically Naive by a day, in the hope that Arsenal will find some way of embarrassing themselves on Monday night. And twice they’ve just about managed to squeak through.

Next time, Gunnersaurus. Next time.

But we did get a few shocks. League Two’s Northampton Town held Derby County to a draw. Oxford United did the same to Newcastle. West Brom overturned West Ham, though honestly nobody was too surprised there. And Jesse Lingard scored a goal. No, really. A whole goal, all to himself.

However, the spiciest surprise came at Shrewsbury, where shortly after half-time Donald Love scored a delicate, precise own goal to put the home side two goals down. Against Liverpool. Who, you may be aware, are current European and World champions, and are currently winning the Premier League by approximately a million points.

No, this wasn’t a full-strength Liverpool team, and yes, there’s a reason Dejan Lovren hasn’t been making too many appearances in the first XI this season. But still, Shrewsbury dragged a little magic out of this knackered old competition and earned themselves the reward of a replay at Anfield. And, as a bonus, a supporting role in the latest round of English football’s long-running argument: A Big Club vs. The Spirit of the Game.

You see, Shrewsbury will get their replay against “Liverpool”, but it will be a Liverpool team with precisely zero first-team players, being barked at by somebody that isn’t Jürgen Klopp. The replay falls inside the Premier League’s sort-of winter break, and Liverpool-proper will be taking the time off regardless.

This is one of those arguments in which everybody’s position makes sense to themselves, yet the tangle of forces and traditions involved make everybody else annoyed. Liverpool and Klopp are probably right in their belief that there is too much football; but equally, that’s down to the ever-swelling Champions League and this season’s Club World Championship, and you won’t see Liverpool skipping out on those. Far too shiny. Far too rich. Far too adjacent to the nexus of power and money that drives elite football.

And so the FA Cup is knocked down another rung or two, and now sits below “a made up vanity tournament in Qatar” in the grand scheme of things. You can see how anybody that still quite likes the FA Cup — and there are a few of us left — might find that a little depressing, even if the logic is apparent.

Still, this air of sadness must be nothing compared to the panic setting in for Everton fans. There’s a very real possibility that Shrewsbury Town will beat the kids, and so succeed where Carlo Ancelotti’s cursed headache of a team failed. A double giant-killing: one on the night, and another by proxy. Shrewsbury Town taking down the entire city of Liverpool — how’s that for magic.