[13] “The schematic nature of the central image threatened to decisively affect the comedy quality of the film “The Goalkeeper,” the critic wrote, “but, fortunately, against the will of the authors, the figure of engineer Karasik was in the center of attention of the audience.

[6] Vartanyan points that "the critics, fierce from long abstinence, pounced on the unfortunate victim with the cruelty of piranhas, exposing the skeleton in a matter of minutes.

[6] The successes included the acting of individual actors, the music of composer Dunaevsky, and the football scenes, which is natural considering that the masters of Kyiv's Dynamo participated in them.

[6] In 1937 one of the critics Tsvainik (in "Krasny Sport" newspaper) wrote: "Alas, the film did not live up to expectations... "The Goalkeeper" is easily broken into two parts.

In order to cause laughter in the audience, there is no need to force the actor to protect the goal of his team with an inconveniently named part of the body... "The Goalkeeper" is far from a masterpiece.

"[6] Another critic Belyayev (in "Spartak" newspaper from Leningrad) wrote: "The story of the Volga region native Anton Kandidov... is boring, uninteresting.

"[6] On the personal note, Axel Vartanyan stated: "The film is indeed light, naive, with a moral, the essence of which was expressed thirty years later by a character in Leonid Gaidai's famous comedy (Kidnapping, Caucasian Style) in a toast made especially for the capital's guest: let's drink to each of us, no matter how high we fly, never breaking away from the team.

[6] This made critics nervous, and the audience (they did not read the reviews or did not pay attention to them), as in the days of big football, stood in long lines for tickets.

[6] The implausible, fantastic ending of the match (it especially irritated the whining critics), when Anton Kandidov, in the last minute, having parried a penalty, rushed across the entire field and scored the winning goal, fit in well with the comedy genre of the film, causing a stormy reaction from the audience.

[7] The whole team of Dynamo Kyiv took part as a cast in film and missed its scheduled match of the 1936 Soviet Cup in Moscow Oblast and was awarded a forfeit.