Gary Sprake

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Gary Sprake
Personnel
Surname Gareth Sprake
birthday April 3, 1945
place of birth Winch Wen ,  Wales
date of death 19th October 2016
position goalkeeper
Juniors
Years station
1960–1962 Leeds United
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1962-1973 Leeds United 381 (0)
1973-1975 Birmingham City 16 (0)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
Wales U-23 5 (0)
1963-1975 Wales 37 (0)
1 Only league games are given.

Gareth "Gary" Sprake (born April 3, 1945 in Winch Wen ; † October 19, 2016 ) was a Welsh football goalkeeper . The 37-time senior international was Leeds United's goalkeeper between 1962 and 1973 . There he won the English championship in 1969 , before that in 1968 the league cup and twice the trade fair cup ( 1968 , 1971 ). He drew attention to himself through often acrobatic rescue operations as well as through his occasional but widely noticed mistakes in some important games.

Athletic career

Sprake grew up in Swansea, Wales, in an area that was also home to international goalkeeper Jack Kelsey . He emulated this on the goalkeeper position little by little inserts for the Welsh national school team, he signed in May 1962 with Leeds United his first professional contract. He made his debut at the age of 16 after Tommy Younger fell ill on March 17, 1962 in the run-up to the game against Southampton FC (1: 4). After a short time he won a regular place at the club and in November 1963 he became the youngest Welsh international goalkeeper with his first international match for Wales against Scotland . By 1975 he finally accumulated a total of 37 internationals; there were also five appearances for the U-23 youth team.

His style of play was often characterized by spectacular rescue operations, but at the same time some mistakes in important games were remembered. When he matured into a regular player in the 1963/64 season, he ensured with consistently good performances that the second division championship was won and thus the promotion to the first class was realized. In the following season 1964/65 he missed only one mandatory game in the league and FA Cup together. He was just about to win the title with Leeds in both competitions before Manchester United won the English championship due to the better goal quotient and Liverpool FC won the cup semi-finals after extra time. Two years later, he received his first, massively self-inflicted and at the same time "infamous" goal against Liverpool when he tried to throw the ball to his teammate Terry Cooper , but broke off the action in the middle and put the slipping ball into his own goal. Sprake finally spoiled the stadium music in Liverpool with the fact that the song "Careless Hands" was played by Des O'Connor . Sprake never got rid of the new nickname and the autobiography published in 2006 was also called "Careless Hands". Regardless of this, he showed himself to be nervous in the decisive moments of the 1967/68 season, when he defeated both in the final of the League Cup against Arsenal (1-0) and in the two finals of the Exhibition Cup (1-0, 0-0) Ferencváros Budapest kept a “clean slate”. A particular satisfaction for him when he won the English championship in 1969 was the important draw in Liverpool on the way to the league title, in which he also did not concede a goal.

In 1970 Sprake played for a long time with Leeds for a "triple" of the English championship, FA Cup and European Cup, but in the end did not win a single title. Another mistake by Sprake in the FA Cup final against Chelsea was remembered. After an early 1-0 lead for Leeds, the "bad luck raven" let a harmless shot by Peter Houseman slip through his arms just before half-time. The pitch was in extremely poor condition - the “ Horse of the Year Show ” had taken place just a few days earlier at Wembley Stadium - but experts say a goalkeeper of his size should have parried the unquestionably treacherous bumpy ball. In the second half, both teams scored one more goal and in the end they parted ways with a draw. For the following replay, coach Don Revie took Sprake out of the gate with a knee injury and replaced him with David Harvey , who delivered a faultless game, but could not avert the 2-1 defeat either. Although Sprake remained "number 1" in the two following years and he won the trade fair cup again in 1971 , the previous mishaps stuck to him and in the final phase of the 1971/72 season he was finally ousted by Harvey. As a result, he also missed participation in the won FA Cup final in 1972 against Arsenal (1-0), in which Harvey again convinced with an extremely good performance. A short time later, Sprake publicly criticized his coach, which in turn worsened his reputation with Revie and also his teammates and his own supporters. He was only used once again in 1973 before he moved to Birmingham City for the transfer fee of 100,000 pounds .

However, a back injury quickly resulted in an early retirement at the age of only 30. A blood clot in his back, which had to be treated as part of a spinal fusion , was primarily responsible for this . After retiring from the football business, Sprakes made headlines through an interview with the Daily Mirror accusing Revie of having been involved in match-fixing . Among other things, this led to a final break with his former teammates, who had always formed a close community with Revie, even beyond the field of play. He later also accused Leeds United of being responsible for his chronic back problems, as he was regularly injected with cortisone injections while he was active . As a result, he became a “persona non grata” in Leeds and he was left out of the successful championship eleven with regard to a later involvement. Only after the publication of his 2006 autobiography "Careless Hands: The Forgotten Truth of Gary Sprake", Eddie Gray , a former teammate , tried to contact Sprake again.

Title / Awards

literature

  • Martin Jarred & Malcolm MacDonald: Leeds United - The Complete Record . DB Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78091-031-4 , pp. 253 f .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Former Leeds and Wales goalkeeper Gary Sprake dies aged 71 . The Guardian , October 19, 2016, accessed October 19, 2016.
  2. ^ Vivek Chaudhary: Gary Sprake: 'Club should pay' . The Guardian , August 12, 2000, accessed October 19, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Sprake, Gary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sprake, Gareth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Welsh football goalkeeper
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Winch Wen
DATE OF DEATH 19th October 2016