Football has seen certain positions revolutionized in the modern era, goalkeepers are certainly one of them. For instance, in the early 1990s, goalkeepers were actually allowed to pick up back-passes directly from other players and that gives us a hint of how drastically it has changed. Reflexes remain as important however there are a few aspects that are crucial to the role, such as being technically good with the ball on their feet, passing and creating fast-break opportunities, while also providing more support to the defenders.
"Goalkeeping is just different. Everyone says we're crazy or something, but it's more a case of us working under a different pressure, thinking about the game differently."
- Bournemouth's Asmir Begovic.
In this study, we're analyzing the best goalkeepers from the last 5 seasons. There'll be goalkeepers from teams spread throughout the "Big-Five" European football leagues and all of them were evaluated in terms of clean sheets, matches played VS goals conceded, minutes per goal conceded and clean sheets, titles and achievements. To finish it off there'll be some curiosities regarding some branding and sponsoring aspects of the players.
Oblak is undoubtedly the goalkeeper that stands the best chance to finish a game with no goals allowed with an astonishing difference of more than 30 clean sheets from the second and third-placed Alisson and Rui Patrício with 104 matches.
Seeing the ratio of matches played vs goals conceded there's one particular player that keeps the goals conceded among the lowest from the group while still standing with the ones with most games played, and that is the one and only Jan Oblak. He has been unbelievable in the last few years and from the moment he left Benfica he just got better and better, year after year proving to be what no one had faith he could become, the most dominant goalkeeper.
Titles-wise Neuer and Buffon being more experienced and established in their careers, end up having an advantage over some of the competitors, but if we take a closer look there are some outliers like Ederson and Ter Stegen who throughout the years tend to be a part of main contenders for their club's respective national league, resulting in them having almost the same amount of titles as the first two mentioned.
The main sponsors nowadays are still Nike and Adidas, as usual, and Puma is also trying to expand their awareness by sponsoring some big names like Buffon, Oblak, and Rui Patrício. Aside from that, there are some data concluded from all the competitors evaluated in this study that presents us the average age, height, and the number of times they've represented their national teams.
That being said who is, in your opinion, the best goalkeeper in the modern era?
Soccer Analytics - Data Analysis
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