Opinion Memo’s memes

Back when Brazil still played the game beautifully, no Brazilian would want to stand between the sticks. The goalkeeper was the veritable outcast in a team that danced and dribbled past all but the goalie at the other end. To be a goalie in Brazil meant you were no good at football. Then in 1994, Claudio Taffarel became an unlikely hero, helping the Seleção lift the World Cup after 24 years. The goalkeeper’s job has been serious business in Brazil since. On Tuesday, a hitherto unknown Guillermo “Memo” Ochoa personified the bitter irony of the goalie — and the Mexico jinx — for the Seleção, when he denied Neymar & Co for 90-plus minutes, pulling off save after stunning save, to earn Mexico a goalless draw tantamount to a victory.

Ochoa, a clubless free agent from July 1, has made the goalkeeper the cynosure of cameras — what even German keeper Manuel Neuer, arguably the best in the business, or Iran’s Alireza Haghighi, who managed to keep his hair undisturbed for 90 minutes, hasn’t managed. Ochoa has also irreversibly shifted the spotlight from Iker Casillas, once a giant, whose errors led to Spain’s humiliating 5-1 rout last week. Goalkeeping legends are just as often about the goalie’s mistakes as not. The same Casillas was the hero of the 2010 Cup that he helped Spain lift. Today, Spain is clamouring for his substitution.

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Memo Ochoa memes swept cyberspace and Twitter saw two million mentions of him during the match. His 26th minute save off Neymar’s header may have triggered rumours about a call from the Premier League, but it’s somewhat unfair to recall Gordon Banks’s save off Pele’s header in 1970. That Banks save was routine, hyped by commentators as the best ever. If Ochoa can prove this was not a one-off feat, his place may well be next to the greatest goalie of all time — Lev Yashin.