England goalkeeping safe in the hands of Ben Foster and Joe Hart

In recent times the goalkeeping position for England has looked to be a major problem. At the World Cup we used David James who, bless him, is getting on a bit and prone to the most ridiculous mistakes, and Robert Green who, well, the less said the better!

Best

Sitting in the wings was young Joe Hart, who despite being voted the best goalkeeper in the Premier League last season by his fellow professionals, wasn’t deemed to be good or experienced enough by Fabio Capello. He is twenty-three years old, has played nearly one hundred and fifty senior games, had three caps already for England and twenty-one under twenty-one caps, but hey, that wasn’t enough apparently. How old was Casillas when he first played for Spain…?

Anyway, since the World Cup Fabio Capello seems to have had a complete change of mind and now thinks that Hart is good and experienced enough. That is good, although his attempt to bring Paul Robinson back still suggests some misgivings and a lack of anyone sensible to challenge Hart for the role.

Heroics

It now seems that there may be some good news in the goalkeeping area. Ben Foster was a brilliant young goalkeeper and earned England recognition when he was on loan at Watford and performing weekly heroics. He returned to Manchester United and looked set to seriously challenge Van Der Saar for the number one shirt, but then suffered a nasty knee injury that saw him miss pretty much an entire season.

When he came back, he did get his chance and a series of blunders saw him blow it. Now he has been signed by Birmingham and seems to have been a new lease of life and looks to be putting himself back in contention for the England team.

Brilliant

On Saturday Foster made a brilliant penalty save from Blackburn’s Morten Gamst Pederson and also made one or two other great stops to help Birmingham to a 2-1 win. His manager, Alex McLeish rates Foster very highly. He told the BBC,

“Ben’s already saved us points. What a save it was from the penalty. He struck it really well and it was a phenomenal save.”

Also speaking to the BBC, Foster made clear his intentions to fight for the England number one shirt,

“When I’m with England I want to be playing, it’s as simple as that really. I want to be playing no matter who I’m with and England’s no different.”

Promise

Now twenty-seven, Foster has a great chance to fulfil the enormous promise he showed as a youngster at Watford. If he can stay injury free, it might just be that England move quickly from having no World Class keepers to having two.

As a Watford fan I watched Foster closely in the two years he spent at Vicarage Road and he was the best young goalkeeper I have ever seen. His agility was incredible and his distribution was top class. It was such a shame that he suffered the injury he did, when he did, as I am sure he would have gone on to become the top man at United and at England. His career was put on hold for too long but now he can get it started again.

Career

Come the next European Championships and World Cup, I’m pretty sure that the goalkeeping position will be least of England’s worries as either of Hart or Foster two have the potential to have a long and successful international career.