Goalscoring goalkeepers have created iconic moments from the 'great escape' to Benfica drama

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — It's usually an act of desperation. One last roll of the dice that can produce the most spectacular results.

At other times it can be the result of a shambolic mix-up. One for the blooper reel.

It doesn't happen often, but when goalkeepers score, it's usually memorable for right or wrong reasons.

Anatoliy Trubin's header in the eighth minute of stoppage time for Benfica against Real Madrid on Wednesday produced one of the most dramatic moments in Champions League history. Not only did Trubin seal a 4-2 win over the 15-time European champion, but he also ensured his team clinched the final playoff spot by virtue of goal difference.

“I didn’t realize what we needed,” the Ukrainian goalkeeper said. “But then I saw everyone telling me to go up. I also saw the manager, so I went up, went into the box and I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. It was a crazy moment.”

No wonder Benfica coach Jose Mourinho celebrated so wildly. The two-time Champions League winner has achieved just about everything in a trophy-laden career, but this was new territory.

Leading 3-2 going into stoppage time, the Portuguese club needed another goal to climb into the playoffs.

“I remember winning or losing at the last minute, it had happened to me several times before, but in this situation where we are winning, it’s not enough," Mourinho said. “You have to change things and take risks.”

It was a risk that certainly paid off and there is a long history of goalkeepers causing mayhem in the opposition box.

While Trubin's goal came in European club soccer's elite competition, veteran keeper Jimmy Glass earned iconic status among Carlisle fans his last-ditch effort that saved the then-fourth tier team from falling out of the English Football League.

It was back in 1999 when the on-loan goalkeeper volleyed home a stoppage-time winner against Plymouth to secure Carlisle's survival — a moment that has been dubbed “The Great Escape.”

“You just try your luck,” he said at the time. “Never pick up the goalie do they?

“I just kept my head down and hit it. I thought I was going to balloon it over the bar, but I couldn't miss from that distance.”

Manchester United's goalkeeping great Peter Schmeichel scored with a header against Rotor Volgograd in the UEFA Cup in 1995. To prove it wasn't just a one off, he became the first keeper to score in the Premier League 2001 — netting for Aston Villa. More recently Liverpool's Alisson glanced in a winner against West Brom in the Premier League in 2021.

Goalscoring keepers don't have to be agents of chaos, merely sent in to pull off late rescue acts.

Paraguay international Jose Luis Chilavert was prolific and once scored a hat trick for Argentine team Velez Sarsfield by converting three penalties.

According to the International Federation of Football History and Statistics, Chilavert, who also took free kicks, scored 67 goals in his career. He was the only goalkeeper to score a hat trick and is the highest-scoring keeper in international soccer with eight goals for Paraguay.

But, the IFFHS says Brazilian Rogerio Ceni is the highest-scoring keeper of all time. According to Guinness World Records, Ceni scored 129 goals in his career.

Colombia's Rene Higuita — famed for his so-called scorpion kick saves and dribbling the ball out of his area — was another keeper known for scoring from free kicks and penalties.

Accustomed to punting the ball long from goal kicks, keepers have been responsible for some of the most outrageous goals from distance — but sometimes it can require a following wind, literally — or an embarrassing blunder from their opposite number.

Stoke's stadium is known as one of the windiest in English soccer and that certainly seemed to help keeper Asmir Begovic in 2013 when he scored after just 13 seconds against Southampton.

He entered the Guinness Book of Records for the longest goal of all time, with his effort measured at measured at 91.9 meters. But it didn't come without a little assistance from Southampton's Artur Boruc, who was wrong-footed and left red-faced as the ball bounced over him.

"It’s a cool feeling but it was a fortunate incident. I feel a bit bad for Boruc," Begovic told the BBC.

Tottenham's Paul Robinson similarly caught out Watford's Ben Foster with another launched effort from his own half in 2007.

And to prove it's not just a modern phenomenon, Tottenham's Pat Jennings scored from his own area against Manchester United in 1967.

The iconic Bobby Charlton, who played in that match later said: “I immediately turned around to look at the referee because I thought well maybe that's illegal because I'd never seen it done before.”

James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Benfica's head coach Jose Mourinho claps his hands while Real Madrid players look at him during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

FILE - Jose Luis Chilavert, right, of Paraguay, celebrates after scoring a goal against Colombia in a World Cup qualifying match in Bogota, Columbia, Oct. 7, 2000. (AP Photo/Oswaldo Paez, File)

FILE - Former Manchester United Danish goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel at the stadium before the Champions League semifinal second leg soccer match between Manchester City and Real Madrid at Etihad stadium in Manchester, England, May 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Jon Super, File)

Benfica's head coach Jose Mourinho runs celebrating at the end of a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Benfica and Real Madrid, in Lisbon, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. "There is Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, '90s Rewind," as well as local news and “specialty programming.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is on the first floor of McIntire’s home.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

This news comes hot on the heels of the decision to shutter CBS News Radio after nearly a century in operation. After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRP-TV and WKRP-DT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”

This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.

D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)