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The Steve Ogrizovic Coventry City story runs to 601 starts, 16 seasons in the top flight and one sunny afternoon at Wembley that the Sky Blues still talk about. It also includes a spell as a policeman, two European Cup winner's medals collected from the bench, a NatWest Trophy wicket and an imaginary arrest in Central Asia. Few goalkeepers have had a stranger or longer career.
Start with the strangest part. In 2003 an online appeal began circulating, asking supporters to petition Tony Blair and the Kazakh government for the release of "footballing legend Steve Ogrizovic". According to the petition, he had trespassed on military land and been detained as a suspected spy. Fans joked that the episode made him a candidate to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.
None of it was true. Reporters found him at Coventry's training ground at Ryton-on-Dunsmore, where he told the Coventry Evening Telegraph. that the whole thing was “a complete hoax”. He added, deadpan, that with recent breakthroughs in science he must have been cloned, and that a petition with 57 signatures would hardly sway the Prime Minister.
From the police to Liverpool's bench
Ogrizovic was born to a Yugoslav father, Nicola, who fled the Nazis in 1942 and found refuge in England. Steve started work as a police officer in Mansfield. Football was a sideline until Arthur Cox spotted his size and handling and took him to Chesterfield in 1977.
A handful of games at Saltergate were enough for Bob Paisley. Liverpool paid around £70,000 and made him understudy to Ray Clemence, which in practice meant waiting. Over five years at Anfield he played only four first-team games. He was, though, on the bench for the European Cup finals of 1978 and 1981, and came away with two winner's medals.
He later told The Independent that the police had already drilled discipline into him and that Liverpool felt much the same. Paisley, Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans never let a player get carried away, even with the European Cup in the trophy room. A well-known agency photograph shows him in his goalkeeping prime (Embed from Getty Images).
Sitting behind Clemence was a fine education. It was not a career.
Shrewsbury, cricket whites and a NatWest wicket
In 1982 he moved to Shrewsbury Town for regular football, and in Shropshire he showed a second talent. He was a useful seam bowler and played Minor Counties cricket for Shropshire. In July 1984 he was part of the Shropshire side that knocked Yorkshire out of the NatWest Trophy, a famous giant-killing, finishing with figures of 10-1-43-1. His wicket was Martyn Moxon.
That same summer Coventry City came calling. Bobby Gould signed him, and the move would define the rest of his working life.
The Coventry goalkeeper who would not miss a game
At 6ft 5in he filled the goal at Highfield Road, and he simply kept turning up. Between August 1984 and September 1989 he made 209 consecutive league appearances, a Coventry club record. Over 16 years he made 601 starts for the club, the most appearances by any Coventry player, and every one of them came in the top division, because Coventry stayed in the First Division and then the Premier League throughout his time there.
He is also one of a very small group of players to appear in English top-flight football in four different decades, along with John Lukic, Peter Shilton and Sir Stanley Matthews. That rare feat started with his handful of Liverpool games in the late 1970s and ended with his farewell in 2000.
He even scored. In the 1986–87 season a long kick downfield bounced past the Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper at Hillsborough, giving Ogrizovic a goal that Coventry fans still bring up in the pub.
Steve Ogrizovic and the 1987 FA Cup final
The same season brought the high point. On 16 May 1987 Coventry, managed by John Sillett and George Curtis and captained by Brian Kilcline, met Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley in the FA Cup final. Spurs had Glenn Hoddle, Chris Waddle and Clive Allen and were favourites. Allen scored after two minutes and Spurs led twice, but Dave Bennett and Keith Houchen's diving header made it 2–2. In extra time a cross from Lloyd McGrath deflected off Gary Mabbutt's knee and looped in, and Coventry won 3–2.
It was the club's first major trophy. Ogrizovic, who had been beaten by Allen's early header and then held firm, was named Coventry's Player of the Year. Fans who want to test their memory of the era can try the FA Cup finalist sticker quiz.
Appearances into his forties and a lap of honour
Another decade of first-team football followed, through relegation scraps and managerial changes. In 1997–98 he started the season as first choice at 40, the oldest player in the Premier League that year. After that he spent two seasons as cover for the Swedish international Magnus Hedman, still training every day and still adding the odd appearance to his total.
His swansong came in Coventry's last home game of 1999–2000, against Sheffield Wednesday. He was 42. At the final whistle he walked a lap of honour, and the Wednesday supporters, whose side were going down, applauded him all the way round.
He did not go far. He became reserve-team manager, and at the end of 2001–02 he and Trevor Peake briefly took charge of the first team as caretakers. Under Iain Dowie he returned to running the reserves, and in 2010 he became the club's goalkeeping coach.
The Steve Ogrizovic Coventry City supporters know best is the one who never left. “I've been very lucky,” he told the Coventry Evening Telegraph. in 2018, by which time he had spent more than three decades at the club. Playing, he said, had been the best part, and coaching was the second best. Coventry has had flashier players than Steve Ogrizovic. It has never had a more permanent one, and supporters who stood at Highfield Road through the late 1980s still describe the 1987 team by starting with the man in goal.