We all know of Tim Howard (I assume you do or else you wouldn't be here). And most of us remember Kasey Keller and Brad Friedel before Howard. And of course there was Meola. But pre-1989 things get hazy. Were there USMNT eras where an American goalkeeper reigned supreme? What even happened before 1989? For some reference, let's revisit the graph from "What Does 100 Caps Mean?"
There's the obvious spike in the early 90s but what this graph doesn't show, and I failed to realize last time, is that the US wasn't playing a ton of FIFA sanctioned games although they were not completely dormant. They played universities and various club teams during the 70s and 80s. At least through these two decades, I'd say they played around 12-20 games a year.
Another thing to note is that because I'm only using FIFA-sanctioned games (I would use the scrimmages if I could find full records of them). Playing 100% of the games in 1981 means you only played one game so obviously the sample size is low. You'll notice the bigger shifts in playing time as the years go by.
I took every goalkeeper that had at least six appearances for the US in their entire career. There are 23 goalkeepers that meet this criteria and the rest have either five or less caps (which I counted 63 but I may have missed a few). I calculated every appearance per month since January 1924 then graphed the percentage of games they played in for the US in the last year. For example, from October 2012 to September 2013 the appearances are:
Howard - 12
Guzan - 4
Rimando - 6
Other - 2
Put into percentages, that's a even 50% for Howard, 25% for Rimando, ~17% for Guzan, and ~8% for the others. (Again, "others" are goalkeepers with less than six career caps.)
I broke the timeline into six graphs so it wouldn't be too much of an info overload but in case you were wondering...
I tried to find either natural breaks in the graph or just stop it at the end of the decade and noticed about six main timeframes.
- January 1924-June 1972
- July 1972-December 1981
- January 1982-December 1989
- January 1990-December 1999
- January 2000-December 2009
- January 2010-current
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January 1924 - June 1972
If you're Roger Allaway you might have noticed that Patrick Hughes and George Tintle are absent from the graph. The graph already stretches out so much I didn't want to add to it for a total of four games. But Hughes was the first to represent a US national team as goalkeeper although the USSF doesn't count their official start until 1913. Jimmy Douglas was the 1930 World Cup keeper and Frank Borghi was present at the 1-0 underdog victory over England. (Borghi also gave up eight goals combined to Chile and Spain that same World Cup. = / ) Douglas is the first goalkeeper of any nation to record a shutout in a World Cup. This time period has a lot of random goalkeepers playing one or two games then never getting in another official match.
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July 1972 - December 1981
I would credit Arnie Mausser with the true, first goalkeeper reign for the US. It stretches over ten years, including 11 World Cup Qualifiers, when those were rare to come by.
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January 1982 - December 1989
The US goes into an odd dormant state in the early 80s. Those two hills on the left of the graph are Winston DuBose's and Arnie Mausser's one appearance for the US which was all there was that year. David Vanole holds down the net for 3+ years, making a clutch save here and there.
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January 1990 - December 1999
Some names might start looking familiar here. Meola dominates the early 90s then Keller and Friedel enter the picture. 2010 World Cup veterean Marcus Hahnemann shows up (green). Most people forget how close the four were in age because Meola started so young. The four are only separated by three years.
Meola: Feb 1969
Keller: Nov 1969
Friedel: May 1971
Hahnemann: Jun 1972
The "other" category really takes a drop off here too. From 1994-99 there are only seven goalkeepers in the mix for the US.
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January 2000 - December 2009
Keller, Friedel start to edge out Meola. Meola's 100th cap is that late red spurt.) After Friedel's retirement in February 2005, Keller really takes over. The US took a look at their fair share of options for a followup to Keller. Howard basically takes the reigns after the 2006 World Cup.
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January 2010 - December 2017
Troy Perkins, remember him? Also can you name the three goalies that fill up "Other" this decade? (Hint: the one you're probably missing is German-American. The other two are here and here.) The graph here is not as sharp as the others because it's only scoping three years. I do expect to see that burnt orange to take over soon though.
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So what are all the goalkeeper eras? Looking at how much they were used in a certain time frame will draw more lines than just pure cap totals. On the list below, there are three numbers per goalkeeper. The first number is how many months they had at least 50% of the graphs above. The second stat is how many months they had the highest percentage in the graph, essentially counting each month when they were the main goalkeeper. Sometimes you could have the highest percentage without having 50%. The 00s graph is a good example of how there wasn't always a goalkeeper who had 50% because of so many goalies splitting time. The last number is the percentage of the first two. The list is sorted by the second number, amount of times they were the month leader.
Kasey Keller 31 / 101 (31%)
Tim Howard 57 / 95 (60%)
Arnie Mausser 65 / 76 (86%)
Tony Meola 56 / 65 (86%)
David Vanole 32 / 44 (73%)
Jimmy Douglas 32 / 40 (80%)
Brad Friedel 8 / 39 (21%)
Frank Borghi 35 / 36 (97%)
Winston DuBose 16 / 28 (57%)
Bob Rigby 4 / 23 (17%)
Mike Ivanow 13 / 21 (62%)
Victor Gerley 20 / 20 (100%)
Gary DeLong 14 / 14 (100%)
Mike Winter 6 / 12 (50%)
Alan Mayer 9 / 9 (100%)
David Brcic 7 / 7 (100%)
Zach Thornton 0 / 6 (0%)
Brad Guzan 0 / 1 (0%)
Nick Rimando 0 / 1 (0%)
Mark Dodd 0 / 0 (0%)
Juergen Sommer 0 / 0 (0%)
Marcus Hahnemann 0 / 0 (0%)
Troy Perkins 0 / 0 (0%)
Keller is the most at 101 months but only a third of those he was playing the lead goalkeeper, or getting 50% of the starts, thanks to Meola and Friedel. Most other goalkeepers are around 60-80%.
I'd say you'd have to have at least two years (twenty-four months) to have any sort of claim to the net, which leaves us with the top nine:
- Jimmy Douglas (1924-1930)
- Frank Borghi (1949-1952)
- Winston DuBose (1979-1985)
- Arnie Mausser (1975-1985)
- David Vanole (1986-1989)
- Tony Meola (1988-1994, 1999-2002)
- Kasey Keller (1990, 92, 1995-2007)
- Brad Friedel (1992-2002, 2004)
- Tim Howard (2002-current)
Things are pretty clear cut until the 90s, when each national team coach had a different preference to their goalkeeping core. Here are the goalkeepers by World Cup:
WC year (starter, backup, third string)
1930 Jimmy Douglas
1934 Julius Hjulian
1950 Frank Borghi, Gino Gardassanich
1990 Tony Meola, Kasey Keller, David Vanole
1994 Tony Meola, Brad Friedel, Juergen Summer
1998 Kasey Keller, Brad Friedel, Juergen Summer
2002 Brad Friedel, Kasey Keller, Tony Meola
2006 Tim Howard, Kasey Keller, Marcus Hahnemann
2010 Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, Marcus Hahnemann
2014 Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, Nick Rimando
So maybe a "goalkeeper era" isn't quite the right term as "goalkeeping web" is. All that to say, there were goalkeepers before Meola, and pretty darned good ones. But draw the lines for the eras wherever your like.