Senne Lammens walked onto a World Cup pitch in the 70th minute as a backup keeper nobody expected to see. Eighteen minutes later, he walked off it as the guy who spilled a routine shot and sent Belgium home.
Now the question hanging over Manchester United’s young goalkeeper isn’t about his reflexes or his footwork. It’s about whether his head can survive what happened.
Gary Pallister, the former United and England defender, has some thoughts on that. And they’re not all doom and gloom.
“He’s getting a lot of abuse online and that’s the nature of the game these days,” Pallister told The Peoples Person. “Right now, he’s going to take some flak for that.”
The play itself was brutal in its simplicity. Spain’s Mikel Merino shot from distance. Lammens got two hands on it. Then the ball squirted loose, and Merino — the only guy on the pitch still moving — followed it in and knocked home the rebound. Game over. European champions advance. Belgium goes home.
Pallister has been around long enough to know how these moments work. He played in an era when mistakes got dissected in the tabloids, not on Twitter. But the mechanics of it are the same.
“I’ve been in that position before,” he said. “As a defender, you’d expect your keeper to save it, and you’d probably sit back on your heels. As a forward, you’re more in tune and more likely to follow it in, which the lad did and he got his rewards.”
Pallister estimated that kind of spill happens maybe once every 20 or 30 shots. Merino gambled and it paid off. Lammens got unlucky. But unlucky doesn’t stop the noise.
Can he bounce back?
United signed Karl Darlow from Leeds as Lammens’ backup this summer, which gives the club some insurance. But it also raises a question: does the front office trust Lammens the same way it did before the World Cup?
Pallister thinks the kid has the right stuff mentally. Lammens had a strong first season at United. He showed composure in big moments. But second-season syndrome is real, and a high-profile mistake like this could linger.
“He’ll wear that for quite a long time, I would imagine, until he gets the chance to redeem himself,” Pallister said. “But at United, I think he’s strong enough to put that behind him. He’s shown that he’s got a good mentality in his short time at United. I think he’ll be fine, but it will be a little bit of baggage for him.”
The former center-back also noted that United looked at Emiliano Martinez last year — the Argentina keeper who won the World Cup’s Golden Glove — and didn’t pull the trigger. Martinez has the kind of unshakable belief that defines great tournament keepers. Lammens doesn’t have that resume yet. But he might still build it.
“There’s a lot of questions asked of Lammens, but he’s answered them,” Pallister said. “There’s always that danger of a second season syndrome, you never know for sure what damage has been done and whether he takes that baggage into the next season, but watching him, I think he’ll be okay.”
The real test comes when the Premier League kicks off and Lammens steps back between the posts for United. One bad moment in Qatar doesn’t define a career. But it does define the next few months.
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