When former Watford and England goalkeeper Ben Foster decided to retire this month, he got a phone call. Newcastle United wanted to sign him.

The person on the other end of the phone was Richard Lee, described by Foster on his YouTube channel as a “super goalkeeper agent” (as well as being Foster’s former No 2 at Vicarage Road).

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Speaking to The Athletic, Lee explains his role in the game: “It’s basically a big jigsaw, where you have to fit the pieces together — or a game of chess where you have to be three or four moves ahead.

“I’ve got Google alerts set up on over 300 goalkeepers in the UK and around the world. I check every match, half-time and full-time, for any keeper substitutions.

“I’m in contact with every single goalkeeper coach to understand their needs and keep spreadsheets so that I know where the gaps are — and where they may appear.”

So when Newcastle were in need in the early weeks of the new season, Lee was prepared.

“I got a bit of intel that Karl Darlow (Newcastle’s backup goalkeeper) had gone down,” he says, “and straight away my mind went to Ben, and I found out he was on their contingency list if anything went wrong.”

Lee called Foster, who was a free agent and 39 years old, after his Watford contract expired at the end of last season.

“I asked if he’d be up for Newcastle and his response was, ‘Yes, that sounds very interesting’.”

Some admin needed sorting quickly: “Ben wasn’t under contract with me. It was more based on us being friends and keeping an eye out for him, which he wanted me to do. I’d always been very respectful of his previous agent so never trod on toes there.

“I got Ben to send me a message saying that I was, in fact, acting on his behalf, which I screenshot and sent through to Dan Ashworth (Newcastle’s sporting director) as, often, players with no official agent have all sorts of people claiming to represent them.

“(Ashworth) was in a meeting with the manager (Eddie Howe), discussing the situation, and he said he would call me back. He also called Ben, who he knew from (their time together at) West Brom, to say that he was going to progress with the conversation.”

Negotiations began.

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“Dan made his initial offer and then Ben was telling me where he was at,” Lee says. “Dan was very good, being creative and also reasonable because I knew the role they wanted Ben to do.

“The figures were starting to get crazy. Ben was in another category to the other goalkeepers they were looking at, so he had a lot of power due to his Premier League experience. On every phone call, Dan and I would try different methods to bump up the money to get it closer, because Ben wouldn’t budge.

“Just to complicate matters, I’d just arrived in Dublin for a client meeting and I was intending to stay at the airport for six or seven hours and then fly back out that day. Not only did I have to be upfront about the fact that the planned meeting was going to be interrupted with these negotiations but there was no (phone) reception in the airport, so I had to keep walking down the road to get a signal.

“Dan came back and said they’d hit the number and let’s do it. That’s when I called to break the news to Ben. I didn’t think there was any issue, but there was a weird feeling when he said, ‘Give me half an hour’. Because he had said if I get to that number he would say yes.”

Newcastle had significantly improved their salary offer and made it a season-long deal rather than just a short-term one until January.

“That was when I got the call (from Foster) to say, ‘Rich, I’m not sure’. We had a few more calls and shared a few messages in which it sounded like he was coming round to it, but then I got the final call and I knew at that point it was a no. He’d asked for that figure almost not wanting them to get there, and the moment they accepted it that provided clarity in his mind that he was done.”

Instead of signing to continue his playing career, Foster retired. Newcastle ended up signing Loris Karius, the former Liverpool keeper who was also available on a free, until January.

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“Naturally there’s disappointment because he would have been perfect for the role,” Lee says. “As an agent, you get a real buzz when things like this come together. It may sound silly but I was imagining being on that journey to Newcastle, knowing you’ve done a significant deal for a player — these are your magic moments. So it was a feeling of deflation after an exciting, adrenaline-fuelled day.”

Not that he was annoyed with his long-time friend.

“It would have been a bit hypocritical for me to get annoyed at Ben or to try even harder,” Lee says, “because I’ve been in the same position, albeit nowhere near the figures we were talking, and the money shouldn’t matter when mentally you’re done with the game.”

It wasn’t the only offer for Foster during the summer.

Lee, who oversaw Jonathan Bond’s move to LA Galaxy of MLS from West Brom last year, set up a Zoom call between Foster and former US champions Atlanta United’s technical director Carlos Bocanegra, who was willing to embrace Foster’s desire to build his YouTube profile. It didn’t happen then, but that’s not to say it won’t in the future.

“It’ll be really interesting if one of them did come up,” says Lee. “It’d be more difficult, because once you’ve been out of the game for a period of time there are naturally going to be a few more question marks. But he has a strong CV and my gut says there’ll be interest, just nowhere near the figures at Newcastle.”

Regardless of not sealing a deal for Foster on that occasion, it has been another hectic summer for Lee, and another rubber stamp on his position as the go-to agent for goalkeepers.

“In the last four windows, there’s been 20 loans, 21 permanent moves and 14 new contracts, so 55 deals of sorts in the last four windows,” he says. “In terms of being goalkeeper-specific, that’s No 1 in the world. No one will be anywhere near that.”

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Given the niche he’s found for himself, it’s no exaggeration when Lee says: “I do believe I’m the best in the world at what I do now.”

It’s taken a while for Lee — who also played for Blackburn, Brentford and Fulham in a 14-year career — to settle on his specialised subject, but it’s now a natural fit.

“Probably the last four years, I made the decision to focus solely on one thing and blend various skills from what I’ve done before,” he says. “Becoming a master practitioner in neurolinguistic programming, writing a book on goalkeeping, playing a few hundred times in the Premier League and Championship, having a business background —  including appearing on (BBC business-idea TV show) Dragons’ Den — it all feeds into being a goalkeeping agent and mentor.”

Lee had spotted the gap in the football-agent market from his experience as a player. “I just wanted it to be done a bit more professionally when it came to goalkeepers, because it’s not like other departments,” he says.

Few clubs have specialist goalkeeper recruitment teams, meaning Lee can offer advice as well as players to solve issues between the sticks. “Rather than them scrolling through 92 teams and trying to figure out who’s out there, they can call me and I can give them four profiles that could fit, financial information, send them footage to review, which saves them hundreds of hours.

“If you keep putting the right people in place, you build that trust with the clubs.”

Lee divides his time between London and Dubai, and being abroad can sometimes enable him to watch more live games than when he is in England. “I’ve got six iPads so I can watch all the (Saturday) 3pm kick-offs at once — and I’m only watching the goalies. I’m really a geek when it comes to this stuff.

“Your regular agent, who also has to cover outfield players, can’t compete, because I know just to be on top of everything to do with goalkeepers takes me 18 hours a day.

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“I try to watch every moment of every client. Wyscout (the football scouting platform) is brilliant because if I haven’t seen it live, it takes 10 minutes the next day to catch up and see every clip.”

By watching so much football, he can also pass on advice to goalkeepers. “I only give feedback to players if they ask me for it. But most will ask for an independent view, to go with what they get from the goalkeeper coach or manager. It’s also nice for them to bounce ideas off me too, as I played there.”

Some keepers also phone Lee before games. “Five or six of the lads call me before every single game for a quick pep talk. Going into a game where nervousness and excitement are so closely linked, a few words can shift someone’s state in an instant and you’re giving them a better chance of playing well. It’s being a mindset coach as well as being an agent.”

To place players at the right club, he also does some dugout analysis. “Sometimes managers don’t fully understand or fully respect goalkeeping and they tend to have goalkeepers that underperform. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy or basic psychology. If they haven’t got their goalkeeper’s back, then the goalkeeper won’t express themselves, they’ll play not to make a mistake.”

Managing clubs’ expectations is also part of the job. “So many clubs want someone who is 6ft 5in (195cm), brilliant in the air and their feet. It’s like they want (Manchester City’s Brazil international) Ederson for £500 per week, so you have to pick the right player for the club at the right time.”

That can mean different things, depending on where clubs are in the pyramid. “In the Premier League you need to have three good goalkeepers; but at the same time, they have to be happy to be playing the role they are in.”

The subject of experienced old-timers getting what appears the easiest gig in football comes up: being the third-choice keeper at one of the big guns.

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“The dream gig!” Lee says. “You get to the point where you haven’t quite got what it takes to be No 1 in the Premier League anymore, so you have to be happy to transition into that role. And you end up becoming a bridge between the staff and players, so it becomes quite an important role.

“Premier League clubs can’t go and get an emergency loan, so you don’t want to end up with an 18-year-old in goal because that could cost you (top-flight) survival if you’re not careful. So you need to be the right character, good in the dressing room, but also able to set the tempo for the goalkeeping group thanks to your experience.

“So Scott Carson, Rob Green and Rob Elliot are good examples of that.”

Carson was on the bench for Manchester City’s first two Champions League games this season at age 37, having made one first-team appearance for them in each of the previous two seasons. Green was 39 in his final playing season with Chelsea in 2018-19, while Elliot was on Watford’s bench 11 times last season at ages 35 and 36.

At the other end of the experience spectrum, Lee is big on young goalkeepers getting away from their parent club and playing rather than stagnating. “You shouldn’t be a No 2 aged 22 and having not got game time. You need to be out to ensure that when the next loan chance comes, it can be a good one.

“It’s the classic catch-22 where managers want a goalkeeper with experience. I did five loans in one week (this summer), all with that in mind: Joe Wright (Millwall to Bath), Luca Ashby-Hammond (Fulham to Aldershot), Louie Moulden (Wolves to Solihull Moors), Jake Eastwood (Sheffield United to Ross County) and Ashley Maynard-Brewer (Charlton to Gillingham).”

Due to his background, Lee has also stepped in when needed and played himself. “One of my players, Nick Hayes, was on loan at Dunstable from Ipswich and got called up to England Under-18s, which left them in a situation. So to help out, I was just about fit enough to step in for a game. We lost 4-1 (in 2017) but it was the least I could do.”

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While that was a short-term fix, it is the long-term which now interests Lee most. “It’s my goal to be sat at a World Cup final watching two of my clients in goal. I had Wales versus the Czech Republic for an international game but I don’t plan to stop until I can realise the ultimate dream.”

That might also be in a future where broadcasters have specialist goalkeeping pundits to provide armchair viewers with an experienced view of events in televised matches — something Lee can’t wait to see become the norm. “To hear (former) outfield players try to break down a (goalkeeping) situation…” he says, “ordinarily, they’re miles off.”

He explains: “Goalkeeping is so niche. It is just a completely different world.”

(Top photo: Richard Lee)