Somehow, I suspect Petr Cech will not be gracing the all-star team of Euro 2008, as he did at Euro 2004 in Portugal. Commentators and scribes can hardly mention his name without prefacing it with “world’s greatest goalkeeper”. Not any more, sunshine. Since having his head almost knocked off by Reading’s Stephen Hunt in October 2006, Cech has never been quite the same. For starters, that ridiculous skull-cap can hardly inspire confidence in his defenders, either at Chelsea or with the Czech Republic.

How can you take your keeper seriously when he looks like Iggle Piggle from In the Night Garden? The fact is that ALL goalies are an accident waiting to happen – and Cech’s clear calamitous tendencies have been hidden behind a rock-solid Chelsea defence most of the time.

How must Paul Robinson be feeling now? Probably doing cartwheels down Tottenham High Road. He has had to endure scorn and derision since his air-kick for England against Croatia and – admittedly – a scrapbook full of other cock-ups for club and country. In the wake of such blunders, the inevitable comparisons with Cech, that paragon of goalkeeping virtues on the other side of London, must have been like a kick in the privates. But the esteemed custodian at Stamford Bridge turns out to be just as big a Jessie between the sticks as Robbo … or Scott Carson or Calamity James.

How can you take your keeper seriously when he looks like Iggle Piggle from In the Night Garden?'

It’s not fair to kick a man when he is down [let’s leave that to the likes of Tal Ben-Haim, who left Cech needing 50 stitches in his face after a collision in training at Chelsea back in April], but we are talking about possibly the dullest footballer on the planet. You can hear sports editors across the land slashing their wrists when the Chelsea press department put forward their goalkeeper for pre-and post-match interviews. Take this from the player’s own official website, www.petr-cech.com: "Perhaps you know already that my surname 'Cech' means "Czech" in translation. So that my situation is approximately the same as that of our doctor in Chelsea whose name is Bryan English …" Fascinating.

But he got away with being boring all the time he was the “world’s greatest goalkeeper”. Then came a rainy night in Geneva. It is already being touted as one of the best matches in European Championship history when, in reality, the first 75 minutes of Turkey against the Czech Republic were about as thrilling as a European Parliament debate on pigeon droppings. Then Arda Turan beat Cech rather too easily at his near post and Turkey were back in the match at 2-1.

Twelve minutes later and that unfamiliar goalkeeping lapse was dwarfed by the moment that will haunt Cech for as long as he wears the gloves. Hamit Altintop’s harmless floating cross from the Turkish right wafts into an almost empty Czech penalty box and the man so proudly named after his country of birth rises to claim the ball unchallenged. Yes, the rain is lashing down and conditions are slippery, but it took spectacular incompetence for Cech to fumble and drop it. Even Turkish skipper Kahveci Nihat looked faintly embarrassed at first as he tapped it home for 2-2.