The Catalan coach brought ball-playing goalkeepers back into fashion, yet the gigantic Italian can help him solve a huge problem
Victor Valdes will never forget his first conversation with Pep Guardiola. He had been Barcelona's goalkeeper for years and had already won a Champions League and a couple of La Liga titles, but the new, rookie coach immediately challenged everything Valdes thought he knew about football.
The legendary Barca goalkeeper told the documentary 'Take the ball, pass the ball': "He [Guardiola] had a tactics board with two small magnets on either side of the goal, just outside of the box. He said 'Do you know which players these two are? These are your centre-backs.' I had no idea what he was talking about; it sounded like he was talking Chinese. And he said 'When you’ve got the ball, this is where I want them to be. You’ll pass to them, and it’s from here that we’ll build the play'. I thought he was crazy.'"
Valdes put Guardiola's play-out-from-the-back ideas into practice and even when it led to him conceding costly goals against Real Madrid, he kept doing it, earning praise from Xavi Hernandez for "not forgetting our philosophy". Valdes' inferior shot-stopping qualities meant he never overhauled Iker Casillas as Spain's No.1, but he helped Guardiola conquer the world with Barcelona. When the coach left for Bayern Munich, he took the same approach with Manuel Neuer, who was even better with his feet as well as being a more reliable shot-stopper than Valdes.
When Guardiola joined Manchester City in 2016, he was so convinced he needed a ball-playing goalkeeper that he rooted out club legend and fan favourite Joe Hart, at first with disastrous consequences as his replacement, Claudio Bravo, flopped, but then for the better when Guardiola landed Ederson.
The Brazil international is now set to leave the Etihad Stadium after eight seasons and with six Premier League winners medals around his neck, but Guardiola's choice to replace Ederson with Gianluigi Donnarumma has turned heads across football, with many observers wondering whether the coach has abandoned his principles.
Getty Images SportConstantly evolving
Guardiola shook up football by making Barca play in a way that hadn't been seen in a quarter of a century, when he was a midfielder in Johan Cruyff's 'Dream Team'. He continued with the same blueprint at Bayern and with City, soon changing the way football was seen in both Germany and England. But contrary to popular opinion, Guardiola has constantly evolved his style of play.
He has gone from playing high-flying full-backs like Dani Alves and Joao Cancelo to fielding a back four entirely comprised of centre-backs at City. He has lurched from playing without a natural centre-forward to later building his team around Erling Haaland, the most clinical striker in the world but whose build-up play is limited. He has even modified how he uses his goalkeepers, as Ederson has mixed his short passes with long launched balls deep into the opposition half, leading to him providing eight assists during his City career, including four last season.
Guardiola explained his methods to last year: ”It's because otherwise I get bored. Always doing the same thing for eight years would be very boring. Secondly, when you do something and it goes well, they [opponents] watch you and create an antidote. If you go too inside, they close in. If we open up the field too much, they'll open it up more. Anything we do and they respond to us, we have to respond again. The third reason is the players we have. What specific qualities they have and when they adapt best to the way you want to play."
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Turning to Donnarumma, though, feels like an evolution too far for Guardiola given his usual demands on goalkeepers. Just two weeks ago, the coach told the podcast: "It's difficult for me to find one 'keeper that is not brave with their feet. It is so difficult to find. Now I'm not saying be like Ederson and have the ability to put the ball 60 yards in the pockets. He has an incredible ability to do that, and Stefan Ortega has this ability as well. But all of them have to be a minimum to play."
Donnarumma, though, is not a goalkeeper who would usually be described as being brave with his feet or who fits the profile Guardiola tends to look for. Indeed, Paris Saint-Germain forced him out this summer at the behest of coach Luis Enrique, even after Donnarumma had helped them win a clean sweep of trophies, including their first ever Champions League, due to the difficulties he faced with the all at his feet.
The Italy No.1 was instrumental in taking PSG to the final in Munich, saving two penalties in the shootout win over Liverpool in the last 16, averting a late comeback from Aston Villa in the quarter-finals before making eight saves in the semi-final tie with Arsenal, after which team-mate Vitinha described Donnarumma as the 'MVP'.
And yet the club decided to sign young upstart Lucas Chevalier and excluded Donnarumma from training as well as leaving him out of the squad for the UEFA Super Cup in a bid to force his departure. His stalling on a contract over a salary dispute may have played a part in that call, but Luis Enrique owned the decision, saying he was looking for "a goalkeeping profile that is different".
Getty Images SportNot Barca enough
Chevalier is certainly bolder with the ball than Donnarumma. Last season for Lille, he completed far more long passes (158-62) and 'launches' (61-16), which are defined by as 'high balls into space or an area for players to chase or challenge for the ball', than the man he has replaced at Parc des Princes. Chevalier also out-performed Donnarumma in more traditional goalkeeping metrics, as he kept seven more clean sheets than the Italian in Ligue 1 last season (11-4) and boasted a better save percentage (71.65-66.22) despite Lille finishing fifth while PSG romped to the title.
The fact that Luis Enrique wanted to sell Donnarumma while Guardiola wanted to buy him is telling. Both coaches played and managed Barcelona, and when Luis Enrique was in charge of the Catalans he refused to sell Marc-Andre ter Stegen to City, instead letting Bravo move to the Etihad Stadium so the ball-playing German could become his No.1.
When he was in the Camp Nou dugout, Luis Enrique was sometimes accused of veering from the 'tiqui taca' style Guardiola perfected as boss, but when his PSG side met a Barca team coached by Xavi in 2024, he cheekily declared that his team played far more like the Barca of old than the current team. And by choosing to move on from Donnarumma due to his limitations with the ball, it seems Luis Enrique is even a stricter apostle of Barca style than the man who originally brought it back into fashion.
Getty Images SportChanging his ways
That is not to say that Donnarumma is particularly bad with his feet when compared to his peers. His passing accuracy was 85.4 percent in Ligue 1 last season, lower than Ederson's 86.3% but higher than City's other two goalkeepers, Ortega (79.4%) and James Trafford (70%). He also ranked third among the four when it came to his save percentage, which was 66.2%, as Trafford led the way with an insane 84.5%, albeit in the Championship.
Donnarumma's reluctance to play out from the back might well stem from one of his worst-ever mistakes, when he was mugged by Karim Benzema inside his own six-yard box as Real Madrid sensationally came from two goals down on aggregate to knock PSG out of the Champions League in 2022. Donnarumma also infamously gave away a goal in Ligue 1 by passing straight to Monaco's Takumi Minamino, while he made two tremendous errors with his feet during his time at AC Milan, as he allowed a Gabriel Paletta back-pass straight into his net while also gifting a goal to Sampdoria when dribbling inside his penalty area.
Those errors contributed to Donnarumma taking a more conservative approach, playing closer to his goal-line than many other top keepers. But it also led to him being renowned as one of the top shot-stoppers in the business, although his 6'5 frame clearly helps.
"He's massive, but his positional awareness in his box is excellent," former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson told the . "That's down to the depth perception he has when he is reading a through-ball and his understanding of where his line is. A lot of goalkeepers get sucked into rushing off their line to try to close down the angle and to close down the shot, and they think they are in a better position further away from the goal. It is something I did myself sometimes, and you find the shot is past you before you are ready. What Donnarumma does instead, very cleverly, is stay closer to his line, maybe two or three yards away. Because of his size he knows he can cover most of his goal from there anyway."
