Petr Cech achieved everything he wanted to achieve in career spent standing out
Cech bows out as one of the premier goalkeepers of his generation and certainly one of the most imposing
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Your support makes all the difference.After so many medals, so many saves and a record number of Premier League clean sheets, there was a single line from Petr Cech that perfectly summed up his career.
“I feel I have achieved everything I set out to achieve,” the goalkeeper said on announcing his retirement at the end of the season after 20 years in the game.
That’s almost impossible to dispute, as is the argument that Cech was for an extended period one of the most imposing goalkeepers in the world, and probably the best.
How could you after a career that brought one Champions League, four Premier Leagues, one Europa League, five FA Cups and three League Cups? So many of those were founded on the utter solidity he fostered, so clearly translated in all those clean sheets. Cech is the only goalkeeper to have recorded over 200 in the Premier League, with that number currently standing at 202.
Few players can match for such a satisfactory medal haul, and no goalkeeper can match him for those numbers.
What was so depressing for opposition sides at Cech's peak was that so many of those clean sheets seemed so easy for him. John Terry used to joke that it was pointless playing darts against Cech because his long arms meant he would just place the arrows where he wanted rather than having to throw them.
Strikers must have occasionally felt the same about trying to beat him.
At his peak, Cech’s presence and command of his goal were so great that it often felt he could merely stand there and pluck the rare attacks that made it through to him out of the air. That was the psychological effect he had, that just made it even harder to beat him, like with all the great goalkeepers.
It is not a coincidence that he was a pillar of the meanest defence the Premier League has ever seen, the Chelsea 2004-05 side that only conceded 15 goals. This was far from a case of a goalkeeper just benefitting from being behind the best defenders, either. That would be looking at it the wrong way. Cech made them better defenders, because of the confidence he inspired. Terry and Ricardo Carvalho knew he had their backs, literally.
Cech didn’t often require the spectacular saves, but he was well capable of them. Two stand out: a stop from Javier Hernandez for Chelsea in the 2012-13 FA Cup and then from Christian Benteke for Arsenal in August 2015.
It is pointed that both of these came after what was a landmark in his career, and something that - despite such a complete club medal haul and that prior status as the best - provokes a sense of what might have been. There’s no denying that the unfortunate collision with Reading’s Stephen Hunt in December 2006 changed his game, and his appearance.
The protective cap thereafter became a trademark of Cech, to the point he himself joked about it appearing in cutscenes of the goalkeeper himself negotiating a contract in a computer game.
More seriously, it was entirely understandable that a certain vulnerability appeared in the goalkeeper’s game for the first after that. He started to commit mistakes you would never have previously associated with him, and it inevitably took him a while to get back to world-class level. It would also be wrong to say he ever quite returned to that ludicrously domineering 2004-06 level.
In other ways, though, that only proved his admirable resilience; his longevity, as he became such an admired figure at two different major Premier League clubs.
It is testament to him that Roman Abramovich felt so indebted to the goalkeeper that the Chelsea owner let him join one of the club's main rivals - and much to the irritation of Jose Mourinho - when the Czech was no longer guaranteed a starting place.
So many teammates felt similarly indebted, while so many opposition players just felt so futilely frustrated.
Cech was at one point and for a long time the best goalkeeper in the world. That is something many number-ones in history have been able to say, but very few of those were as physically and psychologically imposing as the Czech. There was for a time a monolithic invincibility about him, that just felt new, and so dispiriting for anyone facing him. This was what stood out about Cech, and why he will always stand out. He was good enough to often just have to stand up.
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