Posted by DownUnderHatter on 4/2/2022, 1:58 pm, in reply to "Re: Tonight's Team"
Just after the latex farmer's union had made the deal with the goalkeeper's union a strain of Dutch Elm Disease mutated and migrated to the fields of latex trees.
This made the latex a very different material with virtually no elasticity and goalkeepers had the choice of flat hands or a kind of "gripping hands" à la 1970's Action Man.
Most went for the flat palm and parrying shots became the norm. But the South American and Italian keepers opted for the gripping hands style and were forced to punch the ball to "safety".
Dutch Latex Disease was eradicated in 2005 but the goalkeepers that struggled through that era had become goalkeeper coaches by then and were passing down their bad habits to new goalkeepers everywhere.