Joe Hart keeps his feet on the ground after rapid rise to England No1
The Manchester City keeper established his supremacy over the past season but knows how easily fortunes can change
Joe Hart says that, despite the lucky breaks he has had, it takes only one slip to humble you as a goalkeeper.
Joe Hart may be forgiven for feeling bulletproof by now. This is a goalkeeper who has been transformed from a Manchester City loanee to clear first-choice over the past 12 months, a youngster who had in effect been a tourist with the England squad at the World Cup last summer but who can now consider himself his country's undisputed No1. Throw in an FA Cup winner's medal and the prospect of confronting Europe's best in the Champions League next season and his rapid rise is the stuff of dreams.
Yet, where others might have revelled in the perceived invincibility afforded by his new-found status, Hart remains bound by a sense of perspective. "When you list what's happened in the last year like that, quite a lot of things have gone my way," he says. "I've been lucky in a few situations, had breaks with key decisions. But it doesn't matter who you're playing against – I could be down the park playing with my nephew who's not even three but, if he kicks it in the corner, I can't save it. You can be humbled as a goalkeeper. You have to accept that."
Acknowledging as much will keep the 24-year-old grounded. Hart knew this had to be his breakthrough campaign, a year when he felt compelled to make his mark at Eastlands – displacing Shay Given, one of the Premier League's best and a man he considered his "hero", in the process – if he was to live up to the hype that had accompanied his junior career. He had undertaken his own pre-season training schedule while on a post-World Cup holiday in Marbella aimed at hitting the ground running. Those preparations have paid off handsomely. His selection for Saturday's Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland is assumed.
The other contenders have acknowledged just how much of a fixture Hart could become in the England jersey. Paul Robinson has long retired from this level; Ben Foster, Fabio Capello's favoured back-up, has taken a sabbatical from international football with little prospect of displacing the first-choice; even Rob Green, who began the World Cup as No1, has considered his future with England. "I must smell or something," Hart jokes when asked why his rivals were dropping like flies. David Stockdale and Scott Carson, the other selected keepers, do not yet have his aura or assurance. In the event Stockdale, reserve at Fulham to Mark Schwarzer, withdrew to get married today and Green agreed to take his place.
Not that Hart is taking anything for granted. A goalkeeper who made his senior debut at 17 with Shrewsbury Town – "At the time, that was as high as I could go" – will not rest on his laurels after one staggering campaign.
This year was a springboard not a finale. He accepts there will be mistakes on the way, so an ability to put those errors in the past and move on quickly is critical.
"There is a lot of pressure at this level but there is in everything you do whether it is at home looking after the family or playing in goal for England," he says. "You can't live in fear of preventing mistakes. You just have to try and do your best to move England forward.
"I was told I could play at the top long before I realised I could. A few people told me that. I've always had a 'name' and I don't know how I got it but I was blessed with people in the right situations saying good things about me.
"I never doubted myself as such but I did think people were getting a bit carried away. But they showed faith in me and I'm thankful for that. Now I just try to repay them as best I can by working hard and taking the opportunities which have been given to me."
He has done that impressively. He kept 18 league clean sheets this season – the most by any goalkeeper in the Premier League – to leave Given on the outside looking in as the club maintain their emergence into the elite.
Hart was a key player in their successes. The victory in the FA Cup, together with a top-three finish, duly established City's credentials and whet the appetite for the seasons ahead, even if Hart, as with his own progress to date, has already drawn a line under the side's achievements so far.
"Reaching the final – playing in it and winning it – well, you don't realise what you've done until some time afterwards," he says. "All the talk was about the 35 years thing [since City's last trophy] but it's not that. It was the experience bringing us together so much more than before. Before that match maybe we were a group of players. But it feels as if we merged together and realised what we could do together. It brought us on as a team and helped us in the run-in to the season.
"But at the same time we appreciate that, great as it was to win something, we're not just going to carry on playing well all the time. I'd just like to think that, if we do stay together, then, when required, that closeness will get us through a horrible game when we don't play well. That's what Manchester United and Chelsea have got – and you can't buy it. It gets you a 2-0 win and three points from a bad performance."
England would like to shine against Switzerland at Wembley and claim similar rewards but few in the national team, their goalkeeper principal among them, will be taking anything for granted. A sense of perspective persists.
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