Oldest Goalkeepers in Premier League history

[Image Source: Mo Salah Instagram]

Written By: Ifeanyi Ibeh

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Football history has seen some of its players sticking around the pitch past 38 years of age. However, in this article, we look at some of the oldest goalkeepers in the history of football.

This is timely due to the heroic displays of former Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster when he got the better of his old team on Saturday as Watford grabbed a hard-earned goalless draw at Old Trafford.

In the process, Foster, at the very ripe age of 38, became the oldest goalkeeper to shut out Manchester United at the Theatre of Dreams in the Premier League. 

More precisely, at exactly the age of 38 years, 329 days – or 38 years, 10 months, 23 days – Foster became the oldest visiting goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the Premier League, breaking the record of Arsenal and England great David Seaman, who was 38 years 231 days old when he kept a clean sheet against the Red Devils in May 2002. 

But where do Foster and Seaman rank in terms of the oldest goalkeepers to have ever played in the Premier League? 

Currently, Foster is ranked 25th on the all-time list of oldest goalkeepers to have played a game in the Premier League, while Seaman, ranked 11th on the list, was 40 years 3 months 29 days when he played his last Premier League game on January 10, 2004, in the colours of Manchester City, in a 4-2 loss to Portsmouth.

Those were the days when Portsmouth was a bigger team than Man City and paraded the likes of Yakubu Aiyegbeni, who scored twice in that game. 

Seaman picked up a season-ending injury in that game and had to be taken off as early as the 12th minute, long before Dejan Stefanovic, Yakubu and a certain Teddy Sheringham, who five years earlier was Manchester United’s hero in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich, started banging in the goals against a hapless City side. 

The top-10 shot-stopping oldies on this list features a host of well-known goalkeeping greats such as Edwin van der Sar, Jens Lehmann, Neville Southall, and Brad Friedel, but the player who has the honour of being the oldest goalkeeper to have ever played in the English topflight is Englishman John Burridge, who was 43 years, 5 months, 11 days when he manned the sticks for Manchester City in a 3-2 loss to Queens Park Rangers on May 14, 1995. 

What about African goalkeepers? Well, sadly, there haven’t been too many goalkeepers from Africa in the Premier League. In fact, there have only been five African goalkeepers who have featured in the Premier League with Bruce Grobbelaar, the South African-born former Zimbabwe and Liverpool goalie the oldest.

Grobbelaar was 38 years 6 months 2 days when he played his last Premier League game for Southampton in a 3-0 loss to Aston Villa on April 8, 1996. 

The other goalies on the list are South Africa’s Andre Arendse, Ghana’s Richard Kingson, Nigeria’s Carl Ikeme, and Senegalese superstar Edouard Mendy.