🤯 The opposite of Kinsky's nightmare: PL keeper's near-perfect debut | OneFootball

A debut in professional football is always something very special. Especially for goalkeepers, though, it can go badly wrong pretty quickly — we all remember Tottenham keeper Antonin Kinsky’s first Champions League appearance a few weeks ago. 

There is, however, also the other side of the coin. 

West Ham keeper Finlay Herrick came close yesterday to pulling off one of the most incredible professional debuts ever.

The young English goalkeeper was brought on five minutes before the end of extra time in the FA Cup quarter-final against Leeds after first-choice keeper Alphonse Areola got injured. 

The 20-year-old is an England youth international, but before this he had only been on West Ham’s first-team bench four times this season. In the first half of the campaign, he was still out on loan.

So the young keeper, a product of West Ham’s own academy, was thrown into the match completely unexpectedly and almost could have become the hero straight away.

With no more goals in the remaining minutes of extra time, he was immediately faced with his first-ever penalty shootout.

After some final instructions in the tunnel, the moment had arrived — and Herrick got off to an absolute dream start. 

Diving to his right, he saved Piroe’s weakly taken opening penalty. At that point, of course, the question was clear: if that save ended up helping West Ham win the game — or if he added another penalty save — Herrick would have pulled off an almost unbelievable debut. 

In the end, though, two of his teammates were denied by the opposing keeper, so the fairytale never came true. Herrick himself wasn’t able to save another spot-kick. 

So it remains a case of “almost,” and West Ham can now focus fully on the Premier League relegation battle — and who knows, maybe in the next few matches with the man between the posts who came so close to a perfect professional debut. 

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

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