Rimando’s G-xG isn’t only remarkable in sum, either; his consistency has rarely been matched. Goalies face relatively few shots in a season, which means that measures based on them do not have a chance to stabilize. If you’ve ever heard an analytics nerd talk about how we can’t measure finishing skill, this is what they were referring to. It’s intuitive: a few goals rolling over the line—or not—can dramatically alter the course of a player’s season whether they are a goalkeeper or a striker. However, the extent of this variation is still not widely understood, and it affects how fans perceive players. Goalies who are dominant one season are often average or below average the next. Evan Bush was indomitable for Montreal in 2018, racking up -6.07 G-xG (below -5 is considered elite) and earning the plaudits of everyone… on this site, at least. However, his next season saw him give up 7.68 goals above expected, second only to Andre Blake in crumminess. This is the nature of a position that is called on in times of crisis: a few big mistakes can quickly turn into a bad season. Because of that, there are actually not that many goalkeepers who are “good” over the course of their whole careers. In the ASA dataset, only two keepers have a negative G-xG in every season of their career (minimum 20 shots, 500 minutes): Hamid, and Rimando’s former backup Jeff Attinella. This volatility is what makes Rimando’s average G-xG so remarkable. Over the course of nine seasons, he saved 3.26 goals over expected goals per season (-3.26 G-xG), a number bested only by Hamid, with -4.59, and Melia, who holds a -4.82 average, though that number was accrued over only five seasons. This is what makes Rimando’s run of seven straight seasons of above average G-xG so remarkable. (This is where I really feel the lack of information from the first half of his career. Was 2011 a blip, or did he really only become the Nick Rimando we know in 2012? What if Nick Rimando was not a good goalkeeper earlier in his career?) No one has matched it, though Stefan Frei has an active streak of five. Yep, goalkeeping is hard. Doing it for a long time—even harder. Doing it at Rimando’s level for Rimando’s years? Only Hamid can match that. And let’s not forget that, by the time the ASA database was born, Rimando had already been playing for 11 seasons. No one else in MLS history can claim that.

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The score is even: 2-2. Despite Kirovski’s blunder, the Galaxy are back in the game after Josh Saunders managed to get two hands on reliable RSL captain Kyle Beckerman’s shot. Landon Donovan is up. He performs his trademark pre-penalty ritual, the squat. I imagine he is trying to commune with the ball, see the goal from its perspective, imagine what it will take for the ball to guide itself into the net. Do this for me, he seems to be thinking as he crosses himself and stands up, ready for action. Rimando stands on the spot. Really stands, I mean. Stands his ground. This is his fourth penalty; no time for dancing. Or maybe he doesn’t expect to save it and he’s already resigned himself. No one would blame him for not stopping Landon Donovan’s penalty. “That was one I wanted to react to, I didn’t want to just guess, because he’s such a crafty, good PK taker,” Rimando would say later. “So I wanted to kind of beat him at his own game, make him choose a side, not let him go to the opposite side I dive to.”

Shufflestep to the left; it doesn’t matter. Donovan sends the ball sailing over the goal. The letdown is almost comical, though not for him. The greatest male American soccer player turns around and composes his face with the determination of someone who has thought about the possibility of failure before, who is prepared to face it. Not that it’s easy.

Rimando will take it. In his own words, “I stayed as long as I could and he missed.” I like this statement very much, the ambivalence of it. Rimando distances himself from Donovan’s error—only he was capable of missing—while slyly implying that his strategic consideration at least helped it happen. What came first, the chicken or the egg? As a goalkeeper, a miss is a miss either way.

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It can be alluring to rely on metrics like G-xG. It is so specific in what it measures, its implications so clear, that it can appear to tell you everything you need to know about a goalkeeper. With it, analysts can really isolate how effective of a shot-stopper a player is, and tables like the one below really help us see how badly this is still understood by MLS teams. Players like Steve Clark, Jeff Attinella, and Tim Melia were castoffs that took years to find a team that valued them, while many clubs in the league cycled through a litany of subpar options season after season. Look at the save efficiency chart. Andy Gruenebaum has the fourth highest save efficiency. Career backup. (Despite putting up -6.99 G-XG in a completely unnoticed 2012 season.) In 2018 Zack Steffen won the Goalkeeper of the Year award despite being significantly below average (1.77 G-xG). That season, Stefan Frei saved almost 13 goals more than expected (-12.58). The difference between them is equivalent to the difference between a striker who scores zero goals all season and one who scores 14 or 15. No team would accept that trade-off, but it’s still the level at which we (fans, award-givers, and some teams) evaluate goalkeepers.

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Mike Magee has to score to keep the game alive. He doesn’t wait too long for the moment to build; he understands that scoring to keep a team in a game is inherently defensive, anti-climactic. He takes a slight stutter-step and then blasts a curling shot into the upper left corner. Rimando dives the wrong way, helplessly. It’s the best penalty of the shootout so far.

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Much like a producer is not the same thing as a beat-maker, a keeper cannot be reduced to a shot-stopper. In the modern game, they are expected to be all-around players who contribute to the team in more than one way. For example, modern coaches value players who participate in their team’s buildup with accurate, thoughtful passes, rather than the long goal kicks of yore. Rimando always had a good reputation as a distributor for his line drive punts to spark counter-attacks, but was he really a good passer? The data only goes back to 2015 here, limiting the extent of the claims we can make, but what it shows is very interesting.

Pass Score is a measure that compares actual pass percentage to expected pass percentage, based on the distance, location, and type of pass. From 2015 to 2017, Rimando had a mildly positive (11.1) to overwhelmingly negative (-29.7) Pass Score (higher is good here). However, in 2018, he improved greatly in that category (30.6), and in 2019 put up the second-best season for a keeper in the database, completing 54.8 passes above expected, or 5.5 per game. (First is David Bingham in 2019 with 62.7 and 6.1, respectively.) I want to be cautious here. A high pass score does not tell us everything we need to know about a passer. A coach might look for a certain type of pass that a player is not as good at. Rimando’s worst passing seasons came during Jeff Cassar’s tenure as head coach; it’s possible that his defend-and-counter style may not have benefitted Rimando. He seemed to improve under an evolving Mike Petke. (Tactically evolving, I should say.)

There are certain other indicators that can help us fill in this picture. Nick Rimando’s average pass distance remained relatively stable across the seasons measured, peaking in 2015 (35.3 yds) and hitting its nadir in 2017 (32.4). His passes were never among the shortest in the league, for a goalie, but he is closer to them than some of the hoofing brutes that populate the other end of the table. Similarly, his passes measured purely in terms of verticality (how far up the pitch they move), are shorter rather than longer, encompassing a slightly wider range of 22.4 (2015) to 27.2 (2017). In the season when his passes were the shortest, they were also the most vertical, and vice versa. This could imply a tactical shift correlating to the change of head coaches that took place in the 2017 season. However, there isn’t enough information for it to be anything more than that.

The relative stability of these numbers tells us that, whatever changes may have been made, they were not the cause of Rimando’s improved pass score. I’m not sure if it’s definitive, but the story I see is a player in his late 30s still trying to evolve and improve his game. His reaction times and shot-stopping ability—his calling card—were in decline, but he was still making an effort to be better. Despite being in an untouchable position with his club. Despite having nothing left to prove. Again, this might be a myth, a narrative I’m spinning around some suggestive bits of information to help me complete the narrative of this story (Rimando, great!). But isn’t that the stuff legends are made of?

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Chris Klein is next. The crowd is expectant, waiting for someone to send the game off. One or two are just hoping there’s not too much traffic on the way home. This game should have already been over, anyway.

RSL’s fifth and last penalty taker was Andy Williams. He wasn’t in that position for purely strategic reasons. His wife had been battling leukemia, and was being treated in Seattle, the site of the cup final. As a tribute to her, and assuaged by his status as a calm, reliable presence on the team, head coach Jason Kreis decided to let Williams take the final penalty and win the game. He had to know that his rationale was not optimal, but it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Kreis. The odds were heavily in his favor, with almost four out of every five penalties turning into a goal; and Williams was an old teammate and loyal soldier (Kreis played for RSL between 2005 and 2007 before becoming its head coach). Plus, how many coaches do you think really know who their fifth-best penalty taker is? Bruce Arena just placed Gregg Berhalter second, and it worked out just fine. What, it would have been better to give the spot to Tony Beltran?

Chance, though, is indifferent to those types of considerations, and Williams promptly plonked his penalty just right of center, right into Josh Saunders’s breadbasket.

Sudden death.

Chris Klein. The former RSL man cuts a commanding presence in the box. Impressive, because a miss could doom his team to failure. Still, he doesn’t seem to sense it. Similarly to Magee, Klein steps up quickly and places a firm, rolling shot in the side netting. Rimando dives to his left for the fifth time in six tries. He guesses wrong again.

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Can any one player really be “good” at saving penalties? Commentators are quick to declare that so-and-so keeper has a secret ability, an uncanny knack for guessing where the ball is going to go before the attacking player has even made up his mind. Usually this is based on a recent match or tournament where the keeper made standout saves in high-leverage moments. But do these keepers really sustain this level of clairvoyance? If they let eight penalties in a row in, does anyone ever say they are bad at facing penalties? It’s very hard to do, after all.

For better or worse, Rimando’s reputation really hinges on this point. He has managed to be a top five goalkeeper in MLS for most seasons we have data for, and he has done it for longer than anyone in MLS history. That alone puts him in rarefied air. But what makes Rimando special, what gives him his umami, is his ability to stop an opposing player from scoring from 12 yards away with no defenders there to bail him out. And—hold the presses—there may be some evidence to suggest that he is better than most at doing that.

In the nine seasons in the ASA database, Rimando has faced 46 regular season penalties. Seven went the way of the Donovan into the clouds, so we won’t count them here. 46 minus seven is 39, for those following at home. 39 penalties on target. That’s an awful big number, when you look at it. Only Luis Robles has faced more penalties (on target): 44. And, as I mentioned earlier, almost four fifths of these go in on average. 78.5%. So how many went in against Rimando?

Twenty six. The number probably doesn’t say much to you. 26 is not especially evocative. It doesn’t stand out, the way a key detail should. But you’ll quickly realize that 26 is exactly two-thirds of 39. 13 + 13. That leaves another 13 remaining—the amount of saves Rimando made. Nick Rimando saved a third of the penalties he faced.

That is, uh, not normal. To spin the wheel of accolades yet again, let’s go back to our slightly beleaguered friend, G-xG. Nick Rimando managed to put up -6.46 G-xG on penalties alone. That is one full season of peak Jon Busch production in the database (see the table above). The only person approaching that kind of penalty-saving ability is Melia, who has managed to rack up -6.42 on only 24 penalties, having saved 10 of them. This actually makes his rate of saves better than Rimando’s, but he has also had many fewer chances to fail. The guy with the most chances, Luis Robles, has saved eight out of 44, equalling a more modest -1.02 G-xG. We still can’t say for sure whether saving penalties is a measurable skill. Are these numbers predictive? No goalkeeper will ever face the thousands of penalties we analysts would like to see to know for sure. At the same time, Rimando has retired. There is no predictive value to a retrospective. So, I’ll say it: Nick Rimando was excellent at saving penalties. Better than anyone I’ve ever seen.

But that’s not all. Because Rimando didn’t just play in the regular season. He was a part of a lot of winning teams, dating back to his Miami Fusion days, and a lot of postseason runs. He had to face penalties there as well. In 2004, with DC United, facing the New England Revolution in the Eastern Conference final, he saved penalties from Jay Heaps and Clint Dempsey en route to a victory and an eventual MLS Cup triumph. In another MLS Cup final, 2013, he saved a penalty against Matt Besler, although RSL was ultimately vanquished. And in 2009; well, in 2009…

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In sudden death, any miss gives the other team a chance to seal the victory immediately. Edson Buddle walks up to the ball apprehensively. The following season, 2010, would be a career year for Buddle, with the striker bagging 18 goals for a Galaxy side that was even better than in 2009. Right now, he is staring at Rimando, who is weighing his odds. Buddle takes a long, straight run up. It almost looks like a continuation of his walk to the 18-yard box, as if he didn’t measure his distance to the ball, but just planned to walk up and kick. This is it. He opens up his hips and aims a shot for the bottom right corner. Bottom right. Rimando’s left. Rimando sets his feet. His faith won’t be broken—he knows where this shot is going. In less than a second, he pounces on the shot and sends it careening back in Buddle’s direction. It must have hit off his elbow. Save!

No, not save. Rejection. A rejection of the shot, certainly, of Edson Buddle. It’s also a rejection of the Galaxy, the best team in MLS in 2009 and the predestined winners of the cup. It’s a rejection of the fans who didn’t believe in RSL, didn’t even know who they were, and who only watched the game for bigger names. It’s a rejection of coaches who didn’t believe in Rimando, thought him or the league he played in were too small. It’s a rejection of those pundits who said that saving a penalty was not something he could do reliably, something that was just fortunate.

Well, no goalkeeper may ever face enough penalties to truly “prove” their skill in saving them. With 20 more seasons of data, we might have learned that Rimando was no better than anyone else. The more you look into things, the more they tend to dissipate, ideas once solid and definite turned complex and vaporous. Rimando is undoubtedly a great goalkeeper, but after perusing (in the other sense of the word!) the tables, I can’t completely convince myself that he is better than Bill Hamid or Tim Melia. There were other goalkeepers from before 2011 that may have bested him too. Tony Meola. Pat Onstad. Kevin Hartman.

Nick Rimando’s career is over now, though, and the predictive ability of his numbers ceases to matter. What matters is that he was there, when he was there. When I was watching. Maybe he is lucky to have saved those two shots in 2009. Kirovsky’s was pretty bad, and the fact that this all took place in an MLS Cup gives Rimando’s record extra cachet.

But he did it, and that is enough. I watched that game and thought that MLS Cup was something exciting, with special players who showed skills I had never seen before (good thing I didn’t start watching the next season). It was the thread that got the cotton loom spinning, that allowed me to create the narrative that this was an improving league, despite its faults. That allowed me to think this was something worth investing time in. And that’s a narrative I’ve carried with me all the way here. Look.

A legend.