TWO once famous goalkeepers have died within a few days of each other: Ronnie Simpson, of Scotland, and Eddie Hopkinson, of England. Simpson was the boy prodigy, a Scottish first division goalkeeper at 14, who would become a remarkable veteran, winning his first Scotland cap at 36 and helping Celtic to win the European Cup a year later in 1967.

Hopkinson was the Bolton Wanderers loyalist who spent 14 years with the club and was capped 14 times for England, although he stood only 5ft 8¾in. Inevitably he was prone to struggling with high crosses but against that, as Tommy Banks, his Bolton and England colleague, once said: “Eddie was second to none when a forward broke through alone.”

All of which leaves one to ponder the phenomenon of the goalkeeper, the great changes that have taken place and the strange errors committed by even the greatest of them. Goalkeepers are crazy, we are told. I wrote a novel called Goalkeepers Are Different, the gloss suggested by its young goalkeeping narrator. Two things we do know: goalkeepers have got bigger and bigger and since Simpson’s day (he stood 5ft 9½in) they have got older.

When Jock Stein so splendidly managed Celtic and gave Simpson his Indian summer — at a time when the player thought he would only be a goalkeeping coach — Stein remarked that Lev Yashin, of Russia, probably the best in the world, was over 40.

Ah, Yashin. Here we come to the matter of mistakes. In the 1962 World Cup quarter- finals, in remote Arica, Chile, the hosts, beat him twice from long distance and won the game. Four years later, when Franz Beckenbauer, of West Germany, curled one past him in the semi-final at Goodison Park, Yashin’s manager, somewhat harshly, blamed him.

Yet all this was nothing by comparison with what happened to Ricardo Zamora, of Spain, a mighty figure in Europe, when his team met England at Highbury in 1931. England, beaten in Madrid two years earlier — their first defeat against a foreign team — got their revenge in spades, 7-1. Zamora sprawled unhappily and ineptly in the mud. “If Zamora gets £50 a week,” Roland Allen, a columnist, wrote the next day, “Hibbs (the England goalkeeper) is worth a benefit once a fortnight.” Harry Hibbs, like Hopkinson, was no giant.

The England centre forward that day was the prolific Dixie Dean, who once scored 60 league goals in a season, mostly with his head. I once asked him about the game and he said: “At the post-match reception, their interpreter told me, ‘Zamora says he is nothing in Madrid tonight’. I said, ‘Tell him he’s not much here, either’.” But would Dean have headed all those goals against the giant goalkeepers of today?

In later years, foreign goalkeepers have seldom proved as good as British ones in coming to claim crosses. I remember a very early appearance by the huge Peter Schmeichel, for Manchester United at Selhurst Park, when he was surprisingly vulnerable to such balls. Afterwards, Alex Ferguson said charitably that it took time for a continental goalkeeper to adjust.

Adjust Schmeichel did and after his superb performance in the European Championship final for Denmark against Germany in Gothenburg in 1992, I asked him about it. Of course he had improved, he said, taking crosses was what goalkeeping in England was all about.

Until 30 years ago, it was rare to see goalkeepers make saves with their legs. Now they do it time and again with great agility. Much more recently, the anti-backpass rule has burdened them alarmingly. How often do we see goalkeepers who once would have picked up the ball, give away farcical goals with their feet? Gianluigi Buffon, the talented Italy goalkeeper, said that for this reason, the goalkeeper of today has to be much more of an all-rounder than his predecessor.

Meanwhile, the most celebrated goalkeepers prove that to err is human. The day before the 2002 World Cup final, in Japan, Oliver Kahn, the Germany goalkeeper, was voted the best of the tournament. The next day, his feeble attempt to save from Rivaldo gave Ronaldo a crucial goal for Brazil. This season, Kahn gave away another shocker in Munich, enabling Real Madrid to draw a Euro pean Cup match.

Kahn’s rival for the Germany goalkeeping role, Jens Lehmann, has been a wayward figure for Arsenal this season, arguably costing them their place in the European Cup. His attempt to come out and kick clear at Stamford Bridge gave Chelsea a goal in the quarter-final, first leg and a poor save cleared the way for their London rivals at Highbury. Away to Tottenham Hotspur last Sunday, his foolish tangle with Robbie Keane conceded the late penalty from which Spurs equalised.

Sent off twice in the Bundesliga last season, Lehmann was lucky not to be suspended after hurling the ball at Kevin Phillips, of Southampton. Goalkeepers are, indeed, different.

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