Shirt No. 1 · Hands allowed · Members since 1871
🧤 For Saransh — welcome to the Union 🧤
Twenty players on the pitch are not allowed to handle the ball (well, except for throw-ins). Two are different, one in each goal. They wear the wildest colours. They can catch the ball. And when the whole stadium is screaming, the keeper is the last one standing between the ball and the net. This is the book of goalkeepers.
Football is a game for feet. But every team gets ONE player with a superpower. Remember Book 2? Time to go deeper.
Law 3 · The Laws of the Game
A team can have eleven players. One of them must be the goalkeeper. No keeper? No match.
Your friend wants a turn in goal? Fine! Just tell the referee first, while the ball is out of play.
Swap in secret and you BOTH get a yellow card. Sneaky swaps are not allowed.
Law 12 · The magic box
Inside your own penalty area you can catch, punch, throw and hug the ball.
Take one step outside? Now you have normal hands, just like a defender. A handball out there is a free kick. If it stops a sure goal, it's a red card.
Once the ball is in your gloves, NOBODY can take it. Not even the biggest striker on Earth. No attacker may challenge you. An attacker kicks at the ball as you let it go? Or blocks your throw? Free kick to YOUR team! You are untouchable.
1871 to 1912
Goalkeepers first appeared in the rule book in 1871. That's the year the Union was born!
Until 1912, a keeper could handle the ball anywhere in their own half. Imagine catching it on the halfway line, like a basketball player!
From the 1912–13 season, keepers could only use their hands inside the penalty area. It's been that way ever since.
Legend People say one show-off Welsh keeper, Leigh Richmond Roose, caused the change. He bounced the ball all the way up to halfway before booting it. A brilliant story. But nobody can prove it.
You're the keeper. Read each moment. Tap your answer.
1A shot flies at you. You're inside your own penalty area.
Catch it! Inside your own box, your hands are allowed.
2You sprint OUT of your box to stop a long pass.
Outside the box your hands switch off. Use your feet, or your head!
3Your defender KICKS the ball back to you, on purpose.
That's the back-pass rule. Pick it up and the other team gets a free kick. Chapter 2 tells you why.
4Your defender HEADS the ball back to you.
Headers and chest passes are fine. Only a deliberate KICK (or a throw-in) from a teammate is banned.
5Your teammate takes a throw-in straight to you.
Hands off! Since 1997, a throw-in from a teammate counts just like a kicked back-pass.
6You catch it, drop it on the grass, then want to pick it up again.
Once you let go, your hands are locked until another player touches the ball.
Indirect free kick
A free kick you can't score from straight away. Somebody else has to touch the ball first. It's the usual punishment when a keeper breaks a hands rule.
Keepers used to be the sneakiest players on the pitch. They held the ball. And held it. And HELD it. So football fought back.
Italy · 1990 World Cup
The 1990 World Cup had only about 2.2 goals per game. That's still the lowest of any World Cup.
Why so dull? Teams kept passing back to their keeper. The keeper picked it up. And waited. And waited.
One football writer added it up. In one match, Ireland's keeper Packie Bonner held the ball for about six whole minutes!
1992 · A brand-new law
In 1992 football said: enough! If a teammate kicks the ball to you on purpose, you can't pick it up. Your feet have to deal with it.
Denmark won Euro 92 that June partly by passing back to their keeper. A few weeks later, the trick was banned.
One of the very first victims? Italy, at the 1992 Olympics. They got caught straight away, and the USA scored from the free kick.
1997: throw-ins from a teammate were added to the rule. Headers and chest passes back are still fine.
One back-pass won a whole league! Germany, 19 May 2001, the last day of the season. Who would be champions: Schalke or Bayern Munich? Schalke's fans heard it was THEM. They ran onto their pitch to party! But Bayern's game wasn't over. In injury time, Hamburg's keeper picked up a back-pass. Free kick! Bayern's Patrik Andersson smashed it in, his only goal ever for Bayern. Bayern were champions instead. Oops!
Keepers could only take two steps while holding the ball. Later, four.
Next came a six-second limit. But referees hardly ever punished it. Some time-wasting keepers held the ball for 20 seconds or more!
Since 1 July 2025, hold the ball for more than eight seconds and the other team gets a corner. The referee counts the last five seconds with a raised hand. And strikers can't block you to make you run out of time. That's a foul on THEM.
Since 1 July 2026, a ref who thinks you're taking too long over a goal kick starts a five-second countdown. Too slow? Corner to the other team! The rule-makers have even agreed to run trials on keepers who pretend to be hurt to waste time.
Tap CATCH IT! to start the clock. Then tap LET GO! before it reaches EIGHT. Watch the referee's fingers count down the last five seconds.
Try it for real too: hold a ball while a grown-up counts. Can you throw it to a friend before eight?
The happy ending
The back-pass rule forced keepers to get good with their feet. Today's best keepers are half keeper, half playmaker: they start attacks with their feet.
Brazil's Ederson holds the Premier League record for assists by a goalkeeper: 7. That's seven goals he set up, as a goalkeeper!
Record as of October 2026. Ederson now plays for Fenerbahçe in Turkey.
Why does the keeper look like a superhero? Because the referee has to spot the ONE player allowed to use hands. Fast.
Law 4 · Dress different
The law says a keeper's colours must look different from every other player, and from the referee too.
In 1909 keepers first had to wear their own shirt colour: scarlet or royal blue. Green joined around 1912. Today? Neon pink, lime, orange, anything!
Gloves are NOT in the rules. Keepers choose to wear them, because they make catching easier.
Keepers are the only players allowed tracksuit bottoms. They can wear a cap against the sun or the floodlights, and soft padded headgear too.
In July 2023, fans couldn't buy England keeper Mary Earps's shirt for the World Cup. She said that was hurtful. Keepers deserve shirts too!
Dress your keeper from any year. Tap the buttons and read what you picked.
Tap any button to change your keeper's kit!
William Sykes, a football maker from Yorkshire in England, invented leather keeper gloves padded with India rubber (an old name for rubber). He even got a patent: an official paper saying the idea was his. He never made many. So most keepers stayed bare-handed for years and years.
Until the 1970s, most keepers played bare-handed, or wore gloves only in the rain. Some tried gardening gloves and kitchen gloves! England's Gordon Banks did wear gloves in the 1966 World Cup final.
In 1973 a German glove-maker and West Germany's keeper Sepp Maier made a glove with a sticky latex palm (a soft, grippy rubber). Maier wore the big new gloves when West Germany won the 1974 World Cup.
Glove makers stuck towel material and table-tennis-bat rubber onto the palms for grip! By the end of the 1980s, a keeper without gloves was a rare sight.
Grown-ups get these wrong all the time. Do you?
1Keepers MUST wear gloves. It's the law.
It's a myth. The Laws never say so, and any player is allowed to wear gloves.
2Goalkeeper gloves were invented in the 1940s.
It's a myth. Keeper gloves were invented by 1885, and there's a photo of a keeper in gloves from the 1890s.
3Keepers are the only players allowed to wear tracksuit bottoms.
It's a fact. It's written in Law 4.
4Until the 1970s, most keepers played with bare hands.
It's a fact. Lots only wore gloves in the rain. Some even tried gardening gloves and kitchen gloves!
Keepers are brave. In October 2006, Chelsea's Petr Čech was badly hurt when a player's knee hit his head, and he needed an operation. Three months later he was back in goal, wearing a padded rugby-style helmet. He wore one for the rest of his career, more than 12 years. And when he stopped playing football? He became an ice-hockey goalie, and saved two penalties in a shootout in his very first game!
Strikers get the posters. But these keepers became legends. Tap a card to flip it over.
A keeper was once the best player at a whole World Cup. Germany's Oliver Kahn won the 2002 Golden Ball for the tournament's best player. He's the only keeper ever to do it. That same summer he also won the Golden Glove, the prize for the best keeper.
Final · Lusail · Argentina 3–3 France (Argentina win 4–2 on penalties)
Extra time. 3–3. About 15 seconds left. France's Kolo Muani ran through, alone. Argentina's Emiliano "Dibu" Martínez stretched out his left leg and blocked it. Then he saved a penalty in the shootout. Argentina won, and Dibu won the Golden Glove.
World Cup · Round of 16 · Morocco 0–0 Spain (Morocco win 3–0 on penalties)
Spain took three penalties and scored ZERO. One hit the post. Yassine "Bono" Bounou saved the other two. Morocco became the first African team ever to reach a World Cup semi-final.
World Cup · Final · Spain 1–0 Argentina (after extra time)
Spain's Unai Simón kept a record 7 clean sheets and let in just 1 goal in 8 matches. No World Cup winner has ever let in so few. He won the Golden Glove.
In the final, Argentina's Dibu Martínez made 11 saves, the most in a World Cup final since records began. Spain still won. Being a keeper is tough!
| Year | World Cup Golden Glove | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Michel Preud'homme | Belgium 🇧🇪 |
| 1998 | Fabien Barthez | France 🇫🇷 |
| 2002 | Oliver Kahn | Germany 🇩🇪 |
| 2006 | Gianluigi Buffon | Italy 🇮🇹 |
| 2010 | Iker Casillas | Spain 🇪🇸 |
| 2014 | Manuel Neuer | Germany 🇩🇪 |
| 2018 | Thibaut Courtois | Belgium 🇧🇪 |
| 2022 | Emiliano Martínez | Argentina 🇦🇷 |
| 2026 | Unai Simón | Spain 🇪🇸 |
The Golden Glove began in 1994 as the Lev Yashin Award, and got its new name in 2010. Nine winners, nine different keepers. Nobody has won it twice!
The prize for the best keeper in the world is handed out on 26 October 2026 in London. Tap your winners now. Then ask a grown-up to check with you on 26 October! (This page remembers your picks on this device.)
Past winners: 2019 Alisson · 2021 Donnarumma · 2022 Courtois · 2023 and 2024 Martínez · 2025 Donnarumma. Women: 2025 Hannah Hampton, the first ever.
Some keepers aren't happy just STOPPING goals. They want to score them. From very, very far away.
Brazil & Paraguay
Brazil's Rogério Ceni scored 131 goals for São Paulo, from 1997 to 2015. Most of them were penalties (69) and free kicks (61)!
He joined São Paulo at 17 and played about 1,200 games for them. That's the club record!
Paraguay's José Luis Chilavert scored a hat-trick in 1999. Three penalties in one game, as a goalie! He also scored 8 goals for Paraguay, three of them against Argentina.
Guinness counts 129 goals for Ceni, because it leaves out two scored in friendlies.
The keeper who scored with his HEAD. 16 May 2021, the 95th minute. Liverpool needed a goal. Their keeper, Alisson Becker, ran all the way up for a corner… and headed the winner! 2–1 against West Brom. The first competitive goal by a Liverpool keeper in the club's 129-year history.
How far can a keeper kick? A cricket pitch is 22 yards long (20.12 metres). Tap a kick to measure it in cricket pitches!
Tap a kick above. 🏏
Colombia & Mexico
Wembley, 6 September 1995. England's Jamie Redknapp looped a shot at Colombia's René Higuita, nicknamed "El Loco" (the Madman). Higuita dived FORWARDS and kicked the ball away with both heels, over his head. The scorpion kick! (This one is for watching, not copying. Not in the living room, not in the park, not anywhere!)
Mexico's Jorge Campos was only 1.68 m tall. He designed his own rainbow kits. And sometimes he played as a STRIKER: he scored 14 goals in his first season at Pumas!
Rule check: a keeper can score with a kick or a header. But throw the ball straight into the other net? That's just a goal kick.
Sweeper-keeper
A keeper who rushes out of the box to clear the ball like a defender. Higuita showed the world this style at the 1990 World Cup. Germany's Manuel Neuer made it famous.
India has brilliant keepers too. And India's No. 1 plays in YOUR city.
Bengaluru FC · Shirt No. 1
Meet Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. He has kept goal for Bengaluru FC since August 2017, at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium.
He's 1.97 m tall. That's almost as tall as a doorway!
He won the ISL (Indian Super League) title in 2018–19. Then he won the ISL Golden Glove two seasons running, with 11 clean sheets in 2019–20.
"I was below average when I came, but hard work changed it."Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, talking to FIFA
As of 8 October 2026, Gurpreet is India's captain and first-choice keeper, with about 91 caps.
Playing for Stabæk in Norway, he became the first Indian to start a match in a top European league. He kept a clean sheet in a 5–0 win!
The first Indian ever to play in a European club competition: a Europa League qualifier against a Welsh team. An injury made him come off after about half an hour.
Gurpreet was in goal for India's biggest-ever Asian Cup win, and their first Asian Cup win in 55 years.
11 saves against the champions of Asia! On 10 September 2019, India played Qatar in Doha. Qatar had just won the Asian Cup. Captain Gurpreet made 11 saves, and India held them 0–0.
The crossbar is 2.44 m off the ground. Tap a keeper to see how close their head gets to it.
Tap a keeper. 👆
Want to join the Union? Here's your first training session. Grab a soft ball and a grown-up.
Feet apart, about as wide as your shoulders. Knees bent. Weight on the front of your feet. Hands up and ready. Feel like a spring!
Watch it all the way into your hands. Not the striker's face. The BALL.
Ball coming at your chest or higher? Spread your fingers. Bring your thumbs close together behind the ball. Your hands make a W. The ball can't squeeze through!
Ball rolling along the grass? Get your body behind it. Little fingers close together. Scoop it up into your chest. If your hands miss, your body stops it.
Ball at your tummy? Your arms make a basket under it. Then every catch ends the same way: the ball hugged into your chest. Safe!
Coming out for the ball? Shout it LOUD, so your defenders know to get out of the way. Keepers are the bossiest players on the pitch.
The ball is coming. Pick the right catch!
1A hard shot is flying straight at your face.
Make a W, with your thumbs close together behind the ball.
2The ball is rolling along the grass, straight at you.
Body behind the ball, little fingers together, and scoop it up.
3The ball bounces up at your tummy.
Make a basket with your arms and hug it into your tummy.
4A high ball drops out of the sky over your head.
Jump, reach up and make a W. Catch it as high as you can, then hug it in.
Safety first
Practise on soft grass or an old mattress. Never on a hard floor.
Start on your knees. A grown-up rolls the ball just to your side. Fall sideways and grab it.
Land on your side: hip first, then shoulder. Not on your tummy. Not on your elbows.
Hands go to the ball FIRST. Your body follows. Then try it from a crouch. Then standing up.
Never dive head-first at someone's feet. Go down sideways, hands first. Brave is good. Hurt is not.
Some of the best keepers started as STRIKERS. England's Hannah Hampton switched to goal when she was young. Colombia's René Higuita started up front too. So if you love diving in the mud, the Union wants you!
Use a soft ball and a grown-up. Tick each drill when you've done it. (This page remembers your ticks on this device.)
Eleven metres. One kicker. One keeper. The whole stadium holds its breath.
The penalty was invented by… a GOALKEEPER! In 1890 an Irish goalkeeper called William McCrum came up with the idea. The rule was approved on 2 June 1891, and the world's first penalty came just four days later. The scariest moment for every keeper was a keeper's idea. Oops!
Where was the keeper allowed to stand? Tap a year and travel through time.
Tap a year. ⏳
European Cup final · Liverpool 1–1 Roma (Liverpool win 4–2 on penalties)
As Roma's Francesco Graziani stepped up, Liverpool's keeper Bruce Grobbelaar wobbled his legs on the goal line like spaghetti. The penalty flew over the bar! Remember Jerzy Dudek's jelly legs in 2005, in Book 11? He was copying Grobbelaar, 21 years later, for the same club.
World Cup final shootout · Argentina v France
Before France's Aurélien Tchouaméni took his kick, Dibu Martínez picked up the ball and tossed it away. He got a yellow card. Tchouaméni missed. Since 1 July 2023, a new rule says keepers must not unfairly distract the kicker. The rule doesn't name anyone, but newspapers nicknamed it the "anti-Dibu rule". Today's Union rule: be brave, be clever, be fair.
Shootout secrets
When your own team is kicking, you can't stay in goal. You wait outside the box, on the goal line, right at the corner of the big box. Like a statue.
There are two coin tosses. One picks the goal. The other decides who chooses to kick first or second.
Most captains choose to kick first. Does it help? One famous study said yes: first kickers won about 6 shootouts in 10. Another study, with more data, found it was much closer to half. Scientists are still arguing!
In 2017 football tried an "ABBA" order. Team A kicks, then Team B kicks twice, then Team A twice. Too confusing! It was scrapped in 2018. In one ABBA shootout, Chelsea's keeper Thibaut Courtois took a penalty himself… and blasted it over the bar!
Now YOU are the keeper. Five penalties. Can you win the shootout?
The kicker runs in. Near the end, a yellow arrow flashes at their hips, and they lean. The ball usually goes where the arrow points. Arrow pointing up? It's coming down the middle!
Tap ◀ DIVE, ✋ STAY or DIVE ▶ (or use the arrow keys). The arrows mean the left and right of your screen. Go before the ball arrives, just like real keepers have to!
Save 2 of the 5 to win. Save 3 or more and you're a HERO. The game remembers your career saves.
Training ground → Cup final → World Cup final. The higher you go, the faster the ball and the sneakier the kickers. Some fake it: the arrow says one way, the ball goes the other!
Scientists studied 286 penalties from top football. Here's where the keepers went, and where the ball went.
See it? Keepers almost ALWAYS dive. But more than 1 in 4 penalties went straight down the middle!
🧤 HOW MANY DID THEY SAVE?
Keepers who stayed in the middle saved 1 in 3. Divers saved only about 1 in 7. Staying put is a real option!
A penalty is faster than you. The ball reaches the goal in about half a second. A dive to the corner takes longer than that! So keepers have to guess. Real keepers start moving BEFORE the kick. And they guess the right way only about half the time!
But don't go too early! Move way before the kick and the kicker sees you. They just roll it the other way! Wait as long as you dare.
So why do keepers dive so much? Letting in a goal while standing still FEELS worse. Everyone shouts "Why didn't you move?!" Scientists call it action bias.
Don't ALWAYS stay, though. If keepers always stood in the middle, kickers would just aim for the corners. The smart plan is to stay in the middle SOMETIMES.
Every kicker has a natural side. Try it: kick a ball with your right foot. Which corner feels easiest? That's your natural side, and keepers know it! Guess the right way and you have a real chance. Guess wrong and about 9 in 10 go in.
It's rock-paper-scissors. Top kickers and keepers mix up their choices, just like maths says they should. Always pick the same side and you'll get found out.
Saving even ONE penalty in five is great. Most penalties go in: nearly 8 in 10 in Europe's top leagues. In World Cup shootouts up to 2022, where the pressure is HUGE, only about 7 in 10 went in. Every save is a mini-miracle!
Ten questions. Every answer is somewhere in this book. Keep a clean sheet and you win the Golden Glove.