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Football goalkeepers are an eccentric lot. One former Indian goalkeeper had such a philosophical bent of mind that his club coach gave him the nickname 'Plato', which stayed with him through his best years at that team. Yet another I-League and National Football League winner would refuse to join his team for the half-time break. He preferred spending the 15 minutes alternating between having someone kick some balls at him and doing a few somersaults to keep his body warm. One of the consistent goalkeepers of recent years has been a young man whose journey in the sport began when his family elders sent him to the prestigious Tata Football Academy because he grew up in a rough neighbourhood and invariably got into scraps as a teenager. Today, Subrata Pal is the leading goalkeeper in the ISL with 11 clean sheets, and also got due recognition for a stellar India career earlier this year with the Arjuna Award, given for excellence in sport by the Indian government, and last picked up by a footballer five years ago. Pal's performance across three matches of the ISL 2016 thus far has been reflective of the ebbs and flows that have characterized his career as one of the best Indian goalkeepers yet one prone to erratic decision-making. His display on Friday against his former team Mumbai City FC at their new home, the Mumbai Football Arena in Andheri, was perhaps the highlight reel to sum up his season. He began well enough, dealing well with a Leo Costa effort early on in the first half, but then mysteriously came off his line when Mumbai's Matias Defederico looped in a hopeful cross. He was lucky that he spilled the ball but there were defenders around him to clean up. Yet again in the first half, Mumbai's right-back Aiborlang Khongjee took a technically perfect shot from distance, which bounced and spun away from Pal, and he did very well to get a firm right hand on to it. Yet moments later, a harmless free kick saw Pal make a meal of the collection, clumsily bumping into Krizstian Vadocz and getting a foul in his favour when it should perhaps have led to a scoring opportunity for the hosts. His second-half performance was steadier, though he conceded the only goal to Diego Forlan from the penalty spot and would consider himself a little unlucky to not have stopped the kick. Forlan chose to go straight and high, a little to the left from where Pal would have been watching. He guessed absolutely right, but made the error of instinctively going with his right hand to save the ball, his left hand poised to break his fall. This is an unusual style of stopping shots, but not one that goalkeepers don't employ at all. Pal himself used it spectacularly to stop Syria from winning the Nehru Cup back in 2009 in a dramatic shootout in Delhi. It did spoil his 100% record as a goalkeeper in this edition of the ISL -- though it must be said a third match inside six days is tough even for a goalkeeper -- a record that as a team now goes to Mumbai City FC, for whom Roberto Tigrao has been a quiet, efficient presence between the posts. The Brazilian was called upon to save a couple of accurate volleys from NorthEast's Romaric late in the first half. In the second half, he often had to deal with physical distractions, and snapshots at goal by Katsumi Yusa and Emiliano Alfaro, both of whom had the three NorthEast goals going into this clash. But where Pal had a fondness for the acrobatic, Roberto was as old school as goalkeeping could be. Quick feet to get his whole body behind the ball, always cushioning the ball into his body with both hands, and taking his time to gather himself after every save, a classic method of ensuring your teammates get into position for recovering possession and shifting the momentum of the game from defence to attack. In a dramatic finish to the game, Roberto would come way out of his line to push the ball out for the first of three successive corners that NorthEast would earn, of which Pal came right up to the opposition penalty box for. Off the last of them, he would take a dramatic tumble, but on the night, the back four of Khongjee, Anwar, Lucian Goian and Lalhmangaihsanga Ralte were not to be denied. They scrapped and fought for every inch and yard available to deny NorthEast that equaliser they looked for. Mumbai City have kept up the tradition of winning their first home game of the ISL season -- they hammered five goals against both Pune City in 2014 and NorthEast themselves last year, both played at the imposing DY Patil Stadium -- but in both years their subsequent results were often an anticlimax after the promise shown early on. Pal was emblematic in many of them -- pulling off some incredible saves, but conceding some goals which he should never have. Maybe with NorthEast United this season, he will turn a new leaf and put in a more solid showing throughout the next two months. And his former club will discover that sometimes the best way for a goalkeeper to get noticed is not to get noticed at all.
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