USA goalkeeper discussion thread - Episode IV: A New Hope

What am I missing about Schulte?

 

Well what would help them is getting caps. For the odd year B-cups or Winter camps or friendlies/competitive matches against minnows.

Get them noticed after some years excelling in MLS. It'a a shame Serie A or La Liga doesn't scout our guys. We have a lot of solid talent that those leagues could afford so our boys wouldn't just need to be backups in the Premier League.

 

Why would a La Liga team use one of their valuable foreign player slots on a guy like Patrick Schulte? They can find an equivalent European (or other player that counts as a non-foreigner in Spain. Coutonou agreement, blah, blah, blah).

With goalkeepers, you only need one................

,......................those Serie A and La Liga teams don't need those guys.

How many good starting goalkeeper jobs are there in Europe. Actual, good jobs at elite clubs? 100?

What's happening, of course, is that Premier League clubs are hoarding goalkeepers. Most have to sit on the bench. Forest had Turner, Hennessey, and Horvath. Three guys who went to the 2022 World Cup. Not enough, so they bought Vlachadimos, who has 41 caps for Greece. Still not enough, so they bought Sels. He has caps for Belgium. So Forest had five guys with international caps. Why? Because they can.

Slonina was hot, young stuff that everybody seemed to want. Chelsea bought him. But to get experience starting, they sent him to the worst team in the Jupiler League. Its not easy to find a starting job in Europe.

And if you can't find one that works, being a starter in MLS is 100% better. Horvath perhaps has made quite a bit of money as a vagabond journeyman sitting on benches and trying to find a starting gig in Europe. Made a great living. So there's that. Zach Steffen talks about how much he enjoyed his time at Man City.

 

It is disappointing that Steffen hasn’t been very good since returning to MLS.

 

Chelsea buying Slonina was a little different in that he was obviously a prospect, Forest stockpiling mediocre (by EPL standards) veteran GKs is just bizarre.

 

If only Forrest had pooled the money for most of those keepers and purchased one can't miss guy with that money and then had one of those other guys as the backup they'd be a better team and in better financial shape.

 

There seem to be very few "can't miss" goalkeepers these days.

I mean, Forest aren't the only ones.

In that top 20 most disappointing signings of the Premier League season, a bunch of them are goalkeepers. Robert Sanchez cost Chelsea a lot of money, and they're using a former MLS keeper instead. Nobody seems happy with Onana at ManU. Burnley paid 15 million pounds from James effing Trafford. He's meh. The list goes on and on and on. Every year.

Its easy to say "go pay 40 million for an awesome keeper and be done with it." Then you get Onana.

 

Onana actually had a very good season overall. Just some high profile mistakes in Champions League. But he was maybe Man U’s best player overall this season.

 

But not surprising. Was barely above average when there was a deep crisis of young American keepers.

 

The much-discussed possibility of Slonina to Strasbourg.

Strasbourg could also turn to Chelsea for Gabriel Slonina as an option to replace number 1 goalkeeper Alaa Bellaarouch, who is yet to convince the club since taking over from Matz Sels in January.

{L'Equipe} pic.twitter.com/0jLyQQmk1q

— Vince™ (@Blue_Footy) May 19, 2024

 

one step closer to some kevin bacon-esque comparison of slonina and turner

 

A bit of irony that it’s Sels who they have not found a good replacement for.

 

With the European season concluded for the three goalkeepers in contention for the USMNT, lets take a look at how they performed in 23-24.

Slonina (Eupen): Started 33 matches on loan for Eupen, who were relegated from the Belgian Pro League. In the regular season (FBREF doesn't include stats for the Relegation play offs) his PSxG-GA/90 (the advanced shot stopping stat) was -0.06 which placed him 16th of 18th in the league (among payers with a qualifying number of appearances). He also had 1 error leading to a goal. Over the course of the entire season (play offs included) he prevented -1.9 goals (15 of 16 in the league). It will be interesting to see where Chelsea sends him next season. Based on his performance this season, I'm skeptical that he's ready to make a big jump in league quality.

Horvath (Cardiff City): Started 16 league matches after transferring to Cardiff City (who finished 12th in the Championship) in January. He had a PSxG-GA/90 of -0.25 which placed him 27th of 30 Championship keepers. He had 0 errors leading to goals, which is a positive development given his history of making silly errors.

Turner (Nottingham Forest): Started 17 league matches after transferring to Forest in the summer. He had a PSXg-GA/90 of -0.35 which placed him 23rd among 25 PL keepers. He had 3(!) errors leading to goals. A rate of one error leading to a goal every 5.66 matches, the worst among all PL goalkeepers. In short, among those with a qualifying number of appearances, he was the worst GK in the league. I've seen some try to argue that his replacement (Sels) was worse, and while it's true that Sels was an even worse shot stopper (and that takes some doing), the fact that he was much less error prone and comfortable with the ball at his feet made up for it (though just barely). It will certainly be interesting to see what Forest do wrt their goalkeeping situation this summer. They'll likely want to upgrade but will also want to move at least one or two of the keepers they signed this season, and after the way they all performed, I'm not sure how much interest there will be.

 

Admittedly I do not know many of the personalities involved in soccer anymore but who is Julian Eyestone and who is Brentord. I just do not recognize either name. But that is, probably, my fault.

 

The big Dallas kid?

The next Brad Friedel?

 

Sources: Brentford finalizing a deal to sign highly rated USYNT GK Julian Eyestone.

Eyestone, 18, came through FC Dallas academy. Starred at Duke University for a season. Now off to England. https://t.co/6L3SnrOz5P pic.twitter.com/uaampJfSJM

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) May 25, 2024

 

I believe this had been previously rumored, but like our other European youth goalies it will be very difficult to ever break through at Brentford.

 

Indeed. And we have an extremely low success rate in keepers going this route.
Ethan Horvath is one. Ethan didn't leave an MLS academy for Europe, though.

It just seems keepers go to clubs like this and get stuck in the youth teams and reserves without ever finding a ticket out. We talked about this with Alex Borto. So people say "go on loan!!!".....................well all those other clubs have keepers. And you're not the only young keeper looking for a loan.

But anyway, Eyestone is the answer to the question "what would happen if an elite volleyball player became a goalie." He's huge..................and he's been huge since he was 15. Just towered over everyone. Just a monster on youth levels. A monster. And the question has always been "he's got the size, but does he have the agility to go with it in order to be an elite keeper." We'll see. Cuz 6'6" is actually quite big for a keeper. There have only been two keepers in the history of the premier league taller than 6'6". He didn't sign for NTSC last year (as they already had Antonio Carrera starting for them). Instead, he went to Duke a year early as a 17 year old. So that's why he's already played a full NCAA season, and only now turned 18. I don't know if he has access to some kind of passport which is greasing the skids for this move to England.

 

So they changed the rules in England in terms of allowing exceptions to the work permit standards. I forgot the specifics but it’s likely that’s what’s facilitating this move.

 

Their owner like Brighton’s owner made his money through gambling and specifically through separate statistical models that both have built. And they’ve similarly applied that approach to running their EPL teams.