U.S. keeper Kasey Keller played a blinder, but Millwall’s FA Cup run ended with an injury-time penalty and a 1-0 loss to Queen’s Park Rangers.
English newspapers seldom bother to look for merits in losers, but they did the day after Millwall went down 1-0 to Queen’s Park Rangers in the fifth round of the FA Cup Feb. 18. One man dominated every report: Kasey Keller, Millwall’s American goalkeeper.
Keller, said The News of the World, Britain’s best-read newspaper “produced a sequence of brilliant, defiant stops he might never better.” The Sunday Telegraph called his performance “perfect”. “Could Keller hold out forever?”, the Sunday Times wondered, as he thwarted QPR almost every other minute “Probably, you felt, by halftime.”
It was a shock to look at the scoreboard with 90 minutes gone and to see that it still read “QPR 0 Millwall 0”. For QPR’s twin strikers, the England player Les Ferdinand and the probable future England player Kevin Gallen, had run riot against Millwall’s defense. Even Tony Witter, Millwall’s star center-back, sold by QPR for just $150,000 a few months ago, failed to cope. Keller almost saved his team by himself. What follows is a mere selection of his best moments
In the 11th minute. Gallen suddenly appeared, with the ball, wholly unmarked about ten yards from goal
He paused for a few seconds, then blasted the ball toward the top of the net. Keller leapt up to push the drive away
Two minutes later, from a corner, Simon Barker hit a first-time volley straight toward the right-hand corner of the Millwall net. Keller dived to his right to push the ball out
In the 37th minute, Ferdinand hit a bullet from the left-hand corner of the penalty area. Keller remained standing and tipped it over.
With Tony Meola changing professions, it was hard to credit that there is an American keeper anywhere who is half as good as Keller. He alone kept QPR out, for the West London club outclassed its South London visitor in most departments. Millwall had an edge only when it came to aggression. QPR was the tidier, mere precise team, with Ian Holloway its brains in midfield.
The second half continued where the first had left off. On 59 minutes, Keller had to fly five yards to his left to knock out a Ferdinand header from just inside the post. By this time Ferdinand, a power-runner in the Emmitt Smith mold, had come to expect no better, and his shoulders hardly dropped much further. Being caught offside all the time hardly improved his mood either.
Perhaps Keller’s best save came in the 70th minute. Ferdinand unleashed Gallen again, who caught the ball sweetly on the half-volley, sending it toward the top right-hand corner. Keller did not merely stop the shot; he caught it.
Webber’s costly blunder
It now seemed that Millwall might hold out for a rematch at its own stadium. QPR was the third successive London Premier League team Millwall had met in the Cup. The Lions play a notch lower, in the First Division, yet had already dispatched Arsenal and Chelsea in road games.
On 82 minutes, it looked as though Millwall might make the quarterfinals, a height the club seldom scales more than once a decade. From the edge of the QPR penalty area, Andy Roberts belted a drive beyond the reach of QPR keeper Tony Roberts — no slouch himself. But the ball hit the post.
It looked to be Keller’s day until two minutes into injury time. Policemen were already surrounding the Millwall fans, who gestured at the men in blue to sit down and not obscure their view.
Andrew Impey crossed, and Millwall centerback Damian Webber jumped up and handled the ball. Apparently he had thrown up his arms to launch himself into the air, as QPR’s Alan McDonald challenged for the cross. Millwall players chased the referee Philip Don around for a while, but to no avail. Penalty.
Webber left the field in tears. Though already 26, he was playing in only his fifth game for MilIwall, having joined the club from an amateur club in sleepy Bognor Regis.
Clive Wilson put the penalty away with a fierce drive. Keller chose the correct corner, but was a fraction too slow. For the second time in as many years, Millwall and its American goalkeeper had been knocked out of the FA Cup in the final minutes: Last year, it was a last-gasp loss to Arsenal in the third round.
“Keller produced a wonderful performance,” said the QPR manager Ray Wilkins, a former England player himself. “That’s why it took a lot of nerve for Wilson to score.”
Webber was disconsolate: “It was terrible. The ball caught me on the forearm. I didn’t mean it, but I knew the referee would give it.”
Even Wilkins was touched: “I feel immense sympathy for the lad. He’ll be remembered for this one mistake and yet he played really well.”
Millwall manager Mick McCarthy, formerly an Ireland centerback, was, of course, still more upset: “It was an immense body blow and Damian has taken it badly. I don’t think it was a penalty because he didn’t do it on purpose. His hand was knocked up against the ball and he didn’t even see what happened. Maybe it’s my fault. I’m always telling him to get his arms up.”
Yet had QPR won 3-0 McCarthy should have had no complaints.
At least the Millwall fans caused no trouble. Prominent among the footage of rioting England fans in Dublin was a Union Jack with “Millwall FC” emblazoned across it.
“I’m fed up with people from elsewhere who take up a Millwall flag and stir up trouble for us,” said McCarthy.
Even so, finding the stadium was easy: you just followed the police horses. There were 300 policemen on duty for the game.
“There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary and no arrests,” said a Metropolitan Police spokesman, in tones of some surprise.
by Soccer America correspondent Simon Kuper