00:00As the shot flew toward the goal, the keeper did something quite strange.
00:04Goodness me, have you ever seen anything like that in your life?
00:08He'd done it simply to entertain the crowd, because this wasn't any old goalkeeper.
00:13This was Rene Egita, otherwise known as El Loco.
00:17A player who was so fascinating and enjoyable to watch
00:20that many people believe that his playstyle inspired FIFA to change the game's rules.
00:25See, Egita wasn't always a goalkeeper.
00:28He was actually quite a prolific goal scorer in his youth.
00:31But when his team's goalkeeper got injured during a local tournament and he was forced to fill in,
00:36that's when he realised that he had a knack for the position.
00:38And he didn't play it like every other keeper did.
00:41See, while most goalkeepers in the 1980s and 90s treated the ball like a hot potato,
00:46eager to boot it up the field away from the goal any moment that it came their way,
00:50Egita was different.
00:51And as he started playing for Atletico Nacional and the Colombian national team,
00:55his unique playstyle started completely dismantling everything people believed
01:00about how a goalkeeper should play.
01:03If an attacker pressured him, Egita wouldn't just clear the ball into the stands.
01:07Instead, he would actively take them on.
01:09Instead of always taking long passes over the top, which risked being intercepted,
01:13he opted for short ground passes, which helped his team maintain possession.
01:17He also wasn't scared of leaving his box and taking a play all the way to the other end of
01:22the field,
01:22even regularly scoring goals for his team.
01:25As his manager, Francesco Maturana, famously said,
01:28with Egita, Colombia has 11 outfield players.
01:32But playing so aggressively as a goalkeeper certainly had its own risks.
01:36During the 1990 World Cup, Egita got caught with his pants down by Cameroonian striker Roger Mier,
01:42a mistake that ended up sending Colombia home from the tournament.
01:46But still, Egita never apologised for his playstyle,
01:49and as he continued to show FIFA the exciting offensive potential of a goalkeeper playing with their feet,
01:54they started to take notice.
01:56See, football had a bit of a problem at the time.
01:58Before 1992, goalkeepers could pick up deliberate passes from their teammates with their hands.
02:04Teams used this constantly to waste time,
02:06and as they did, it made the game quite stilted and slow.
02:10So in an effort to fix this, and perhaps inspired by Egita's playing style,
02:15iFab changed the rules to disallow keepers from picking up a kickback from their own teammates.
02:20The rule change forced keepers to become more well-rounded players,
02:24it made the game move much faster,
02:26but it also opened the door to more of these odd moments.
02:29To hear about one of the strangest unintended outcomes
02:32of FIFA's war on ball-fondling goalkeepers, tap here.
