Brad and Charlie Hart are season-ticket holders at Spurs. Father and son, they always sit near the tunnel at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and at full time, after every game, 10-year-old Charlie will rush to try to get the attention of the players as they walk off the pitch. But earlier this month, after Tottenham had beaten West Ham United 4-1, Charlie realised he had forgotten his trusted marker pen for those autographs he covets so much.
Little did he know that he would leave the stadium that Saturday afternoon not with a few squiggles of ink on his shirt or a programme but with a true collector’s item. Advertisement During the match, Spurs’ goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario had put on a baseball cap to keep the lunchtime sun from his eyes, a moment celebrated by nostalgic football purists as a welcome return of a once-prominent piece of goalkeeper kit. “Old school vibes,” said one fan on social media.
Those were the days: a ’keeper in a cap or maybe jogging pants, putting comfort before fashion, looking more suitably dressed to wash the car or take the dog for a Sunday morning walk than play in the world’s top domestic football league. While it was commonplace in the 1990s and early 2000s to see a goalkeeper in a cap — Oliver Kahn for Germany and Bayern Munich springs to mind — it is a more unusual sight now. Long gone are the days of goalkeepers wearing flat caps, like the great Lev Yashin .
“Vicario came out with the goalkeeper coach (Rob Burch), who was ho.