Lev Yashin used to live next door. This is a story passed down to Lazio goalkeeper Ivan Provedel. His mother Elena is from Russia and grew up in the same Moscow neighbourhood as the only goalkeeper to win the Ballon d’Or.
“My grandparents lived on his street,” Provedel revealed. “They knew each other well. When I was a boy my nonna used to tell me a great goalie was their neighbour.
“Only years later did I become aware of his greatness.”
Sportwriters often work destiny into a narrative and it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which the young Provedel, born in 1994, goes to stay with his relatives, listens to their tales of Yashin saving more than 150 penalty kicks and then watches a teenage Gianluigi Buffon make his national team debut in the snow at Dynamo Moscow’s ground to help Italy reach the 1998 World Cup.
Alas, Provedel didn’t commit to goalkeeping until quite late, hence the name Yashin meant nothing to him until he was much older.
Sure, the position interested him. “I fell in love with Francesco Toldo thanks to Euro 2000,” he reflected. “I remember his saves against the Netherlands as if they were yesterday, the penalties he stopped. I watched the videotape of that game so much I practically wore it out.”
But Provedel was conflicted. After all, who wants to be a goalkeeper? For years they were undervalued. The world-record fee Juventus paid Parma for Buffon went unbroken for ages and the Ballon d’Or votes went to goal scorers and conjurers not shot-stoppers. Buffon himself believed Yashin’s Ballon d’Or was politically motivated as it came at a time of a Khruschevian thaw in relations between the Soviet Union and the West.
“I was a striker until I turned 15,” Provedel explained. “My goal-to-game ratio was actually decent.”
Understanding what is going through a striker’s head must help a goalkeeper. Reading their intentions makes reaction time relative. A split second all of a sudden no longer feels like a flash and Provedel has established a reputation in Italy as an elite shot-stopper. He was named Serie A Goalkeeper of the Year last season ahead of France’s new No 1 Mike Maignan, Champions League finalist Andre Onana and Tottenham-bound Guglielmo Vicario.
Few queried Serie A’s choice. Provedel kept 21 clean sheets — at least five more than any other goalkeeper — and had the highest save percentage in the league as Lazio finished runner-up to Napoli and returned to the Champions League.
In a volatile league with four different champions in four seasons, some wondered whether this might be Lazio’s year in Serie A. Defeat away in Lecce, a bogey ground for this team, put a quick stop to the dreaming, as did an undeserved loss to newly promoted Genoa. Beating champions Napoli offered a glimpse of the Lazio we admired last season only for Juventus to make that result look like an exception to the rule.
The Biancocelesti lost three of their first four games for only the second time in 60 years. If you were to put a finger on why, it would waver over a transfer window without a sporting director, the silliness of unsettling Provedel by entertaining the idea of signing Hugo Lloris, the sale of Sergej Milinkovic-Savic to Al Hilal, concentration lapses and bad luck such as Milinkovic-Savic’s replacement, the entirely different Daichi Kamada, deflecting a shot past Provedel in Tuesday’s game against Atletico Madrid.
It was Lazio’s first Champions League game in front of a crowd in 16 years and a frustrating night became a night no one will forget.
Provedel kept Lazio in with a chance of a point by smothering a shot from Atletico winger Samuel Lino. On the sideline, Diego Simeone could not believe it. A member of Lazio’s last league title-winning team at the turn of the century, the reception afforded him by the Curva Nord moved the former midfielder. But as the game wore on his overriding emotion became frustration. “We didn’t close out the game,” he lamented.
Atletico decided to sit back and suffer, a style so anathema to Lazio’s coach Maurizio Sarri he once said he’d rather go back to working in a bank than ever adopt it himself. But it was effective.
For all the pressure Atletico came under it did not look like they would concede. Lazio’s wingers Mattia Zaccagni and Felipe Anderson have yet to score this season. Milinkovic-Savic’s move has left the team lacking presence in the opposition penalty area. Sarri surprisingly elected not to put on his new €15million (£12.9m; $16m) striker, Taty Castellanos, who scored four against Real Madrid for Girona last season.
Luckily a providential moment arrived.
A great goalkeeper’s instincts mirror those of a great striker and Provedel showed them in stoppage time against Atletico. He stayed up for the second phase of a corner kick and, all of a sudden, this blurry figure in yellow rushed behind the Atletico defence and headed in Luis Alberto’s cross. It was the last act of the game.
“The goal might seem lucky because the keeper scored it,” Sarri said, “but it’s not like that. We didn’t deserve to lose.”
How lucky can it be when Provedel has done it before?
This was not his first goal as a goalkeeper. The 29-year-old rescued Juve Stabia a point against Ascoli a few years ago, going up and answering another 94th-minute Hail Mary. “It went well,” he said with the taciturn nature typical of Friuli Venezia Giulia, a region of Italy famous for producing cool, calm and collected goalkeepers, most famously Dino Zoff.
“His goal brought the Olimpico down,” Zaccagni said. “I couldn’t believe it. It’s something you rarely see.”
It is rare indeed. Provedel became only the fourth goalkeeper to score in the Champions League and only the second to do it from open play.
The former Spezia keeper claimed to have watched enough late runs by Milinkovic-Savic over the last couple of years to be able to mimic him. “He was an inspiration,” Provedel said. “He’d be happy with that. But I don’t want to make myself out to be something I’m not.”
As Provedel’s team-mates carried him on their shoulders under the Curva Nord, Tuesday night became a night to tell the grandchildren about. Yashin’s Muscovite neighbours would be proud.
“I’ll only realise what I’ve gone and done later,” Provedel said.
(Top photo: Ivan Romano/Getty Images)
Christine Lake is a sports fanatic who lives and breathes athletics. With an extensive background in sports journalism, he covers everything from major league championships to grassroots sports events. When she’s not on the field or at the stadium, you’ll find Christine coaching youth sports teams.
