Harper Steve
Stephen Alan “Steve” Harper is a former English professional footballer, and currently an academy goalkeeping coach for Newcastle United. He is best known for his time playing at Newcastle United, having amassed 157 league appearances over a twenty-year period between 1993 and 2013. Although he was not always the first-choice goalkeeper at Newcastle, he was the longest-serving player in the club’s history.
“I hadn’t played for a while … you’re walking along shaking hands and you’re thinking ‘That’s Pavel Nedvěd and that’s Del Piero’ and there’s the Champions League music blaring” Steve Harper
Did you Know?
In 2002, he made several appearances in the UEFA Champions League, most notably against Juventus. The match was played at St James’ Park and Harper managed to keep a clean sheet during a 1–0 win over the Italian champions. The victory helped Newcastle qualify from the group stages of the tournament. Harper has handed in a transfer request in his time with Newcastle, citing lack of regular first team football as his reason (something which Given also did when Harper kept him out of the team under Gullit). He has been linked with moves to West Bromwich Albion, Celtic, Watford, Rangers, and Liverpool in his time with Newcastle, though none of these purported moves came to fruition.