I’ve seen a lot of unfortunate stuff during soccer games — not limited to fans throwing grenades at players and a kid in San Francisco running the length of the field to score a goal on her own team — but I’ve never seen anything quite as coincidentally unfortunate as what happened to Sporting Lokeren goalkeeper Boubacar Copa Barry during Sunday’s game against Club Brugge in the Belgian Pro League.
Barry was knocked unconscious when he dove to his right in an attempt to save Carlos Bacca’s shot and ended up lawn-darting himself into the goal post. Here’s the clip, which bleeds into “funny” territory now that we know he isn’t dead or paralyzed.
Thankfully, Ryan over at Dirty Tackle was able to provide a translated update on the keeper’s condition:
According to Belgian news site Knack.be, Barry suffered a concussion but was later discharged from hospital. He was replaced between the sticks by his Serbian understudy Jugoslav Lazic, who was unable to stop Club Brugge emerging as 2-1 victors.
Let this be a lesson to any other fearless Belgian goaltenders reading … if you’re gonna throw your entire body into a save, make sure you’re hitting air or net.
