Once upon a time, back in the 1860s, there were no goalkeepers in soccer. This special position crept quietly into the rules in the 1870s and has been flourishing ever since.

There is a saying in soccer that “goalkeepers are crazy” — which sounds about right, for the goalkeeper has turned into the sport’s cuckoo, taking over the nest and assuming an importance that goes far beyond anything that the early rule-makers could possibly have imagined.

The cuckoo image seems to me exactly appropriate, for I have no doubt that as the importance of goalkeepers has grown, the entertainment value of soccer has been pushed aside.

The goalkeeper stands today as the supreme symbol of anti-soccer, the goal-killer, the shutout specialist with little involvement in what happens at the other end of the field, where his teammates are trying to score against his like-thinking opposite number.

All of that would be unobjectionable, a case of a guy merely doing his job, were it not for the fact that the goalkeeper’s role has undergone an enormous expansion since those early rules, which stated he was “allowed to use his hands in defense of his goal.”

Today’s keeper does so much more than that. To take the obvious example: He spends more time catching or punching crosses — which are not a direct threat on his goal — than he does making saves. He finds this pretty easy, and why not, when he is given not only the advantage of using his hands, but the luxury of the entire penalty area in which to do so. That’s 7,128 square feet, or the equivalent to about 1 1/2 NBA basketball courts.

Goalkeepers these days frequently stray outside their area — mostly to deliver long kicks downfield. They are rarely challenged on these occasions but are allowed all the time in the world to prod and poke the ball forward, until they finally whack it as far as they can. Sometimes it ends up in the arms of the opposing goalkeeper. Watching goalkeepers exchange prodigious kicks is hardly a riveting attraction.

As to goalkeepers not being challenged, it is virtually an unwritten rule in the modern game that any challenge on a goalkeeper will be ruled a foul. That keepers need special protection when leaping, arms raised, for high balls, or when diving at the feet of forwards is undeniable. But the protection has turned into nurse-maiding, giving goalkeepers an almost untouchable status.

Adding to the perversity of the keeper is the fact that he can only really shine when his own team is not playing well — that’s when his saves are called for. He’ll rightly get credit for those saves in his stats, but he’ll also get statistical credit for a shutout in games where his defenders play so well that he has little to do.

This tendency to highlight the goalkeeper as a team’s key player has been further enhanced by the use of the penalty kick shootout as a tiebreaker. A keeper is never blamed for not saving penalty kicks, so he is never the goat in a loss; but his saves can be crucial and then he will be hailed as the hero, the game-winner. This, too, is tainted praise because referees have a strong tendency, yet again, to favor goalkeepers and allow them to get away with breaking the rules by moving forward before the kick is taken.

Goalkeepers are also directly responsible for a good deal of ugly soccer; they cause it with those long high kicks (in this weekend’s English premier league game between Aston Villa and Liverpool there were 40 such kicks). As these deliveries descend, they invariably result in heading duels, maybe head clashes with elbows flying, unpleasant little episodes as players fight to bring the ball under control.

Rounding off this catalogue of goalkeeper iniquities is the flagrantly offensive way in which they constantly yell and scream at their own players. Nearly every time the opposition gets off a shot on goal or wide of the mark, watch the goalkeeper storm out of his goal, theatrically berating his teammates for some error that only he has espied.

For a soccer player to make a fierce public display of criticizing a teammate on the field is rare. The goalkeeper is the only player who makes a habit of it. One is entitled to be cynical about it, because it smacks of grandstanding; the loud-mouthed, apoplectic goalkeeper entered the game during the 1970s, just when live telecasts of matches were becoming widespread. The TV cameras duly record his antics as he sews the idea that whatever disaster may happen around his goal, it won’t be his fault.

The fact that his teammates put up with this crude abuse is further evidence that goalkeepers are a protected species. Another weekend English game — Arsenal’s home opener against Fulham — saw Arsenal keeper Jens Lehmann commit an atrocious blunder after only 50 seconds, presenting Fulham with a gift goal. Did Lehmann get yelled at? Of course not. Most damagingly, the goalkeeper is one of the chief reasons that goals are so much more difficult to score than they used to be. The average goals-per-game figure in World Cup history tells the story: in the first six editions, from 1930 to 1958, it was 4.27; in the next six, 1962–1982, it was 2.76; while the most recent six editions, 1986–2006, have produced 2.5.

There are obvious ways to reduce the goalkeeper’s negative influence on the game. The goals could be enlarged, though this is something that the soccer authorities have long resisted. The area in which the keeper can handle the ball could be substantially reduced. And — as a way of reducing his role as an instigator of ugly play — he could be barred from kicking the ball over the halfway line. Goalkeeper grandstanding seems to me something that fellow teammates should deal with.

The overall picture of the goalkeeper in the modern game is of a player who has simply gotten too big for his boots. Certainly, he is bigger than keepers used to be — but the size of the goal has remained unchanged, and the defenders in front of him are better organized than those of past years. His dominant, and negative, influence on the game is an absurdity in a sport whose defining characteristic is a ban on the use of hands.

pgardner@nysun.com