Goalkeepers are taught to make themselves as big as possible to stop shots with whatever body part they can.
Well, Nick Rimando gave us a quality example of that this past weekend.
Real Salt Lake got back in the win column on Saturday by taking a 2-1 home win over the Houston Dynamo, but they would not have had it not been for a remarkable save from Rimando that will likely be added to his highlight list.
In the 80th minute, a wild play saw Leonel Miranda denied a would-be equalizer by Rimando and the post before Andrew Wenger took a point-blank shot on the rebound. Fortunately for Real Salt Lake, a diving Rimando was there to parry the ball away for a corner.
"[My face is] good," Rimando told RSL radio show On Frame, tongue firmly in cheek. "I think I need to be a hand model now. I’m okay. Right when it happened my reaction is to get up and make sure the ball doesn’t get in the net. But me and [assistant coach Daryl Shore], we practiced those face shots all week and it paid off."
While Rimando was initially shaken up a bit by the save, he stayed on the field and helped RSL close out the Western Conference win. The veteran goalkeeper finished the match with three stops, but the one most will not forget is the one he used his face to block.
"The ball comes across and for me I just had an instinct that he was going to go back post," said Rimando of the start of the play. "I stayed a little bit and once it came through to the players, I kind of reached for it hoping to get a piece of it and I was able to get a piece, and it hit the post.
"The second part to it was just getting up. As a goalkeeper your reaction is to get up if the ball is back in play and make yourself as big as you can and that’s exactly what I did. Lucky for me, the ball hit my face and not the net.”
Unfortunately for Rimando, some MLS Save of the Week voters weren't big on the save, as his effort was eliminated in the first round of this week's contest.
