Just two weeks ago we were mourning the death of England’s greatest goalkeeper, a man who did his job without fuss. It would be presumptuous to guess the reaction of Gordon Banks, were he still alive, to the behaviour of Kepa Arrizabalaga in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday but it’s hard to imagine any footballer of his generation not being appalled by the young Basque’s display of insubordination, for which he belatedly apologised on Monday evening.
It is not just the orientation of the Wembley pitch from north-south to east-west that has been radically modified since Banks enjoyed his finest hour on the turf now so arrogantly desecrated by Arrizabalaga’s refusal to accept his substitution. Chelsea’s payment of £71.6m to bring the 24-year-old to the Premier League, and the wages of £70m that he is due to receive over the seven years of his contract, belong to a different planet from the one inhabited by a man whose career began in the era of the £20 maximum wage.
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