What Amadeo Carrizo Changed for Modern Goalkeepers
Amadeo Carrizo ranks No. 32 on this list because he changed what a team could expect from a goalkeeper. He played 521 matches in the Argentine Primera División for River Plate and won seven league titles. He left the penalty area to start the next attack, and in the 1950s he put gloves on when other Argentine goalkeepers still played with bare hands. Later goalkeepers who are asked to come off their line are measured against that career.
Amadeo Raúl Carrizo Larretape was born in Rufino, in Santa Fe province, on June 12, 1926. The Argentine Football Association records that birthplace and that date. He was about 6 feet 2 inches. The English Wikipedia and National Football Teams both list the height as 1.88 meters. His Primera debut for River Plate was May 6, 1945, against Independiente. River won 2-1. He was 18.
The Ubaldo Fillol page is the Argentine goalkeeper of the 1978 World Cup. The Lev Yashin page is the Soviet goalkeeper of the same decades. The Manuel Neuer page is the later goalkeeper who made leaving the penalty area an ordinary job. This page is the River Plate goalkeeper who left his line, and who put gloves on, before either habit was ordinary in Argentina.
River Plate years
He replaced Héctor Grisetti for that debut. The Centro para la Investigación de la Historia del Fútbol records that he played only two matches in 1945. The regular job came later. He stayed at River through the 1968 season. The Argentine Football Association describes that stay as 23 uninterrupted years.
The association says he won seven domestic titles with River. Wikipedia and DataFactory list the years as 1945, 1947, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, and 1957. Wikipedia's season table lists no Primera appearances for him in 1947. The honors lists still include that year's title among the seven. He shared a dressing room with José Manuel Moreno, Félix Loustau, Adolfo Pedernera, Ángel Labruna, and a young Alfredo Di Stéfano. DataFactory also credits him with the Copa Aldao in 1945 and 1947 and the Copa Ibarguren in 1952. In 1966 River reached the Copa Libertadores final and lost to Peñarol of Uruguay after three matches.
Wikipedia, citing River Plate's site, records his 500th appearance on March 30, 1967, in a Metropolitano match against San Lorenzo at the Estadio Gasómetro. On July 14, 1968, in a league match against Vélez Sarsfield, he was 42. English Wikipedia gives that match as the day of two records: 521 official Primera matches for River, and 769 minutes without conceding, past Antonio Roma's national record of 741 minutes. BDFA also lists 521 Primera matches. Carlos Bianchi, then 19, headed the goal that ended the run. Clarín reported the header, Bianchi's age, and the 769 minutes. The Argentine Football Association later noted that Franco Armani passed that club record. Carrizo's last season in the Argentine top flight was 1968. Wikipedia puts his age at the end of that run at 42 years and 7 months.
Gloves and leaving the line
On December 5, 1954, Argentina lost 2-0 to Italy in Rome. Transfermarkt lists Giovanni Viola in Italy's goal and Carrizo in Argentina's. El País reported that Carrizo asked Viola whether the gloves helped, that Viola said they did, and that Viola gave him a pair. El País also reported that Carrizo wore them against Racing in the next domestic match.
Olé and a later quote date the first pair in Argentina to 1957. Olé wrote that Viola gave him a pair that year, that Carrizo bought another, and that he hid the gloves in his stockings and put them on only when he reached the goal. La Nación quoted Carrizo placing the Italy trip in 1957. In that quote he said he tucked the gloves into the waistband of his shorts until the whistle, because wearing them embarrassed him. Goalkeepers in Argentina were still playing with bare hands. Olé adds that other goalkeepers still wore knee pads, and that he played without them. The match record places Viola in Rome on December 5, 1954. The 1957 date is the one Olé and Carrizo's later quote use.
Gloves in that era were cloth or thin leather. They padded the hand and gave a little more hold on a heavy leather ball. They were not foam latex. Jorge Monastirsky told La Nación that the early pairs his father, Leopoldo, made for Carrizo in the early 1960s were thin kid-leather gloves with table-tennis paddle rubber on the palm and the knuckles. Open-pore latex foam came later. Gebhard Reusch worked with Sepp Maier on that catch surface around 1973. That change is in the complete history of goalkeeper gloves.
Wikipedia calls him the first Argentine goalkeeper who regularly left the penalty area, and the first who used the goal kick as a planned start to an attack. The Argentine Football Association describes the same style. He came out to intercept, and he restarted play with his feet. Gyula Grosics was leaving his line for Hungary in the same years. Yashin was starting the next attack in the Soviet Union in the same decades.
The October 1954 Superclásico is the one Olé and Goal.com both still tell. Boca's José Borello, that season's Primera top scorer, closed him down. Goal.com reported that Carrizo could have cleared, dropped a shoulder, went around Borello twice, and laid the ball off. River won 3-0. He later told El Gráfico, in the interview Goal.com quoted, that he and Borello were friends, that Borello never held the dribble against him, and that a clearance smashed into a nearby player could have gone into the net. Writers later named Hugo Gatti, René Higuita, José Luis Chilavert, and Manuel Neuer as goalkeepers who inherited the habit of leaving the line.
Argentina national team
Published counts of his Argentina matches run from 19 to 22. The Argentine Football Association lists 19, between 1954 and 1964. BDFA and the English Wikipedia list 20. National Football Teams and DataFactory list 22. The public figure is about 20.
He was in the squad for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, Argentina's first finals since 1934. Omar Sívori, Antonio Angelillo, and Humberto Maschio, who were playing in Italy, were not in it. Labruna was still in the attack at 39. The group was West Germany, Northern Ireland, and Czechoslovakia. On June 8, 1958, West Germany won 3-1. On June 11, Argentina beat Northern Ireland 3-1. On June 15, Czechoslovakia won 6-1. Argentina finished last in the group. The association's notice of his death calls that Czechoslovakia match a hard elimination and says the team was heavily criticized.
In 1964 he started at the Taça das Nações in Brazil, also called the Copa de las Naciones. It was a four-team tournament for the 50th anniversary of the Brazilian federation, with England and Portugal also invited. Argentina won it. The Argentine Football Association says Carrizo finished the tournament without conceding a goal, and that in the last match he saved a penalty from Gerson. That is the senior title that sits outside the River list.
About 20 caps across a decade is a shorter record than 521 Primera matches. River had him for 23 years. The national team used him from 1954 to 1964. The 6-1 in Sweden and the 1964 title are both in the association's account.
Millonarios
In 1969 he played one match as a reinforcement for Alianza Lima against Dynamo Moscow, with Lev Yashin in the other goal, and one match for Universitario against Corinthians. In April 1969 he joined Millonarios in Bogotá. He finished there in April 1970. Wikipedia records those dates. Colombian crowds called him Tarzán for the acrobatic saves. The 521 Primera matches and the seven league titles remain the club record that defines the career.
Legacy and death
In 1973 he managed Deportivo Armenio to promotion into Primera C. The same year he returned to Colombia and managed Once Caldas, then known as Cristal Caldas. Wikipedia records both jobs.
On December 27, 2012, River Plate named him honorary president. The Argentine Football Association records that date, and records that a section of the Belgrano Baja stand at the Monumental carries his name. He died on March 20, 2020, at 93. The association published that date. Wikipedia and Infobae place the death in Buenos Aires.
The IFFHS named him the best South American goalkeeper of the 20th century, ahead of Chilavert and Fillol. The association repeats that ranking in its notice of his death.
June 12, his birthday, is observed in Argentina as the Day of the Goalkeeper. In 2011 Senator Jorge Banicevich proposed that date as the National Day of the Football Goalkeeper. La Nación and later reports treat June 12 as that day. A 2020 report in MDZ said the project did not become a national statute. The date is still the one used for the commemoration.
The palm on a modern glove
The gloves Carrizo wore were cloth or thin leather. A modern goalkeeper palm is foam latex. Foam latex is a later material. That palm is the catch surface. A hold after coming off the line is a hold on that foam. Moisture on that foam activates grip by sealing the micro-pores. Water fills the pores, blocks air through the backside, and the foam sucks onto the ball. Sweat is not clean water. When the moisture evaporates, salt from sweat stays in the pores and keeps drawing the natural moisture out of the latex. Dirt packs in with the salt. The palm can still look whole while the ball slides off it. Why those pores create suction is in how latex foam grips the ball.
People hear the word balm and think of lip balm. KEEPER BALM is a compound of organic, natural ingredients that is safer than most lip balms, and it was made for grip on the foam palms of goalkeeper gloves. KEEPER BALM is a compound of humectants. Those humectants keep the natural moisture in the latex, and they restore the natural moisture to latex that has dried out. Restoring that moisture restores the pliability that is already in foam latex. The difference between this grip product and a cream for skin is in what KEEPER BALM is.
If the foam is still on the palm, wash the gloves, let them air-dry, and apply KEEPER BALM. Wash the dirt and the salt out with a lukewarm rinse, and squeeze the palms gently. Do not dunk the gloves. A soak leaves grit and water in the foam. That packs the pores instead of emptying them. Air-dry the pair away from a radiator, a dryer, and a hot car. Then apply a thin layer of KEEPER BALM to the clean, dry palms. The steps are in how to care for goalkeeper gloves. The same order, for foam that has dried out, is in how to restore grip on dried goalkeeper gloves.
KEEPER BALM is for foam palms that can still take grip maintenance. If a goalkeeper cannot use KEEPER BALM because of the condition of their glove palms, then Glove Glu is an option. Replace the pair when that is the right call.
Pros use it too, and KEEPER BALM keeps goalkeeper gloves gripping like new for the life of the gloves.
The part other goalkeepers can copy is that he left the penalty area and still had to hold the ball. He played 521 Primera matches for River Plate, won seven league titles, and used the goal kick to start an attack. The gloves he wore were cloth or thin leather. If the foam is still on the palms of a modern pair, wash the gloves, let them dry, and apply KEEPER BALM before the next session.