The Gordon Banks save from Pele

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Has just popped up on my Instagram feed, and i suppose it pops up every so often for most people with a passing interest in football.

But… does anyone else think that it’s not actually anything special?
I mean, it’s good, for sure. But every description I’ve read of it seems to bear no relation to what he actually does. He’s well positioned, and his reflexes are good. But that’s about it.

Anyone agree?

[The Reverend]

Sam Howes wouldn’t have saved it

[Hoover Attack]

It wasn’t as good as the one Dean Brill made away at some shithole in the season we went up.

[faldO]

For someone who only had one eye I'd say it was right up there with the best.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Ridiculous point. You might as well say “for a 75 year old it was a great save”

[Max B Gold]

Even Joey Jones would have saved it.

[RedDwarf 1881]

It wasn’t as good as the one Dean Brill made away at some shithole in the season we went up.

I believe it was at Aldershot .

[Adz]

It was a great save, but there's been thousands just as good over the years. I think it's fame was because it was against Pele

[Orient_Man_And_Boy]

For someone who only had one eye I'd say it was right up there with the best.

His car accident was much later.

[Story of O]

1972

[The Reverend]

It wasn’t as good as the one Dean Brill made away at some shithole in the season we went up.

I believe it was at Aldershot .

Correct. 5:15 onwards

[Hoover Attack]

The way Brill shuffles half a yard to his right and plops through the air like a flying potato is incredible.

[Proposition Joe]

It was a great save, but there's been thousands just as good over the years. I think it's fame was because it was against Pele

And because it's from an era when live games and highlights were so few and far between.

[Dunners]

It was a great save, but there's been thousands just as good over the years. I think it's fame was because it was against Pele

And because it's from an era when live games and highlights were so few and far between.

I was going to say similar, but is it also fair to add that, in those olden days, goalkeeping techniques were not as refined as what we're accustomed to? So, in hindsight, it doesn't look as spectacular to us as it would have done to spectators at the time?

[Rich Tea Wellin]

Seaman’s against sheff Utd was better wasn’t it?

[Hoover Attack]

Shall we destroy that tackle by Bobby Moore on Pele next?

[The Mindsweep]

Shall we destroy that tackle by Bobby Moore on Pele next?

Seen loads better

[OyinbO]

Think the fact it was in a World Cup AND during a glorious defeat for England ticks a couple of important boxes too.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

I’m not suggesting it wasn’t a high profile save, it a save in an important game (though we did lose, so it wasn’t a save which turned a result, if we’re using that metric)

Just that technically, it isn’t actually a save that happens in the way that it’s routinely described as happening.

It’s described as if Banks makes an impossible leap across goal to somehow tip over a header into an undefended part of the goal.
But it just isn’t that - as the cross comes over, Banks adjusts his positioning correctly, and gets down very well to the header. But if you look where he is at the time the header is made, if he hadn’t have got a touch to it, you’d be looking at it as being a keeper error

[Dunners]

Looking at it again, I think that Banks has to leap back and under his frame slightly to block the ball, which does make it more difficult. And it's a powerful header at relatively close range. So it's definitely a very good save, but we'll all have watched better over the years in successive tournaments.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

There’s a slightly zoomed out one that’s used less often where it shows that it’s really all about the positioning.

I think what I’m saying is that it’s great goalkeeping, but the save itself is just the result of excellent positioning.

I also think that it’s the fact that the ball is pushed up and over, rather than to the side, that makes it more photogenic, even though the actor pushing it up made it more likely to go in

[Proposition Joe]

Seaman's save was actually better than I remembered, the way he changed direction and had the strength to divert the ball:

[Proposition Joe]

Shall we destroy that tackle by Bobby Moore on Pele next?

Lunges in due to poor positioning.

[Chief crazy horse]

Jim Montgomery's save from Lorimer in the 1973 Cup final, wasn't bad either!

[Max B Gold]

I think Banksy's later career in high quality street art and murials was more remarkable. Especially as his sense of perspective would have been radically changed by the loss of an eye. Who knows maybe that gave him the idiosyncratic aesthetic he displays in his scribblings and etchings.

CEB take note. Try painting with one eye closed or better still with a pirates eye patch.