Well the people mentioning AUTOLOAD are actually talking about this version of goto. For example this post explicitly mentions goto &{ $AUTOLOAD };.

The interest of goto isn't only about the fact that it transmits the current value of @_ to the called sub. Actually this is already the case when you do this:

sub exportFunctionName
{
  &_internalImplementation;
}
[download]

this is documented in perlsub

If a subroutine is called using the & form, the argument list is optional, and if omitted, no @_ array is set up for the subroutine: the @_ array at the time of the call is visible to subroutine instead. This is an efficiency mechanism that new users may wish to avoid.

Actually I'm pretty sure there was a post about goto being slower than a simple function call (because it has to exit the the local changes) but I couldn't find it.

So the main interest of goto lies in the fact that it doesn't add a function to the calling stack but instead replaces the current one. This means that with this code:

sub A { goto &_A; }
sub _A { B(); }
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The B function will never see &A in the calling stack, but only &_A. This can be used for debbuging, when you want to call a wrapper function (to print "About to enter &function", or check the input). I remember this question where this was precisely what the OP asked for.

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