Why Erik Ten Hag went for Andre Onana discarding David De Gea | Football News

Carles Busquets, father of Sergio, spent most of his Barcelona days as an understudy to the imposing Andoni Zubizarreta. But one day, in 1993, Johan Cruyff, the visionary-manager, would put Busquets in the team-sheet ahead of Zubizarreta. To the shocked assants, the Dutchman would patiently explain: “Andoni is an exceptional goalkeeper, but not good with his feet, Carles might not be as good as him with his hands, but with the feet he clearly is. And that’s the future of goalkeeping.”
Busquets, who spent his early days at the La Masia academy dreaming to be a striker, would use his feet so much that he was mocked as the “goalkeeper without hands.” But Cruyff, a deep thinker of the game, was envisioning the future, how the role of the goalkeeper would evolve after the back-pass rule was modified in 1992 (where a goalkeeper cannot gather a direct pass with his hands), and how a keeper’s dexterity with the feet would become as important as his ability to wither shots with his palms. The intuition of Cruyff was so divine that he used to deploy the keeper-sweeper — the coinage of the term attributed to former Manchester City manager Joe Mercer — even before the tweak of back-pass rule. Goalkeeper as an eleventh outfield player, constantly involved in action, rather than as an aloof, often passive participant.
When managing Ajax before he did Barcelona, Cruyff often persed with Stanley Menzo, one of the first black-keepers in the game. He used to make the occasional blemish when coming far out from his perch, but Cruyff would stoutly defend him. Menzo would later explain the legendary manager’s thinking. “His way of thinking about goalkeepers was that you need to be part of the team. Why keep a goalkeeper only in a small part of the field when you can use him in other parts? You have to extend your range, not only stay in the box. That way, the team can extend their range forwards.”
But it would be another two decades before sweeper-keepers would become indispensable for a progressive elite-level team. The high-pressing game that teams employ these days have made it uncompromising for keepers to be comfortable with their feet, venture outside the box, initiate attacks and protect the space behind the high line. Rather than expecting them to make a hasty hack of a clearance, a familiar sight as recent as the stroke of the last decade, they are expected to control the ball and pass. So much so, it’s no longer a novelty to watch a keeper play-making.
Any high-pressing team requires the goalkeeper to be adept with their feet and possess a wide range of passing. When teams press in a high line, they invariably leave space behind the defensive lines. There lurks the risks of defense-splitting through balls or aerial passes. So the goalkeeper is forced out of the box to intervene, and restart the press. Compared to the conventional shot-stoppers, they are expected to perform defensive actions previously considered to the defenders’ duties, that is recoveries, tackles, interceptions, clearances away from their own goal as well as launch quicks attacks with the vision, imagination and sharpness of a deep-lying playmaker.
There is no better example of this super-modern goalkeeping prototype than Manchester City’s Ederson. A supreme dributor of the ball, many of City’s upfield thrusts originate from Ederson’s slipping in an eye of the needle pass, the range be short, medium, or long. Among all goalkeepers in the Premier League last season, he had the best pass completion rate (84 per cent) as well as long-pass accuracy (52). Both facets were essential in his club’s ascent. While doing all these, he is good at keeping the ball off his own net too. He has kept 106 clean-sheets in 229 games, the second best clean-sheet percentage (46.29) in the Premier League era. He thus is more of a keeper-libero than a sweeper-keeper.
Not just Manchester City, behind every successful club, there is an Ederson-like figure. Liverpool has his compatriot Alisson, Bayern Munich possess the incredible Manuel Neuer, Barcelona Marc-André ter Stegen and Real Madrid Thibaut Courtois. It explains why teams are ditching the old shot-stopping faithful for Ederson-likes. A case in point is Manchester United’s insence with Andre Onana, who has reignited the sweeper-keeper versus shot-stopper debate with the catalogue of howlers in the Champions League. Many of the fans are still fuming over the decision to let go off club legend David de Gea at the start of the season, though he was adjudged the goalkeeper of the league last season, and though he had topped the clean-sheets ls, despite manning a flaky backline.
But United manager Erik Ten Hag’s rationale is clear — he wants his team to employ a high-line, high-press strategy. De Gea, though an immense blocker of goals, is not quite a pass-dributor, a reason Spain too discarded him long ago. Onana fitted the prerequisites, and thus an obvious candidate. In the last season of the Champions League, where his Inter Milan reached the finals, he made more accurate long balls (116) than any other player. In the Premier League, he is the joint highest clean-sheet keeper (five), and made the second most number of saves (54). Though his passing completion, defensive action outside the box and cross-stopping prowess require improvement, an allowance could be made that he is just six months into his EPL adventure, before any conclusive judgement is passed. But Ten Hag’s decision to jettison De Gea was not without logic.
There was a similar outcry among Manchester City fans when Pep Guardiola displaced fan favourite Joe Hart with Claudio Bravo. The latter had an indifferent start too, but eventually the fans understood the logic. Ederson would turn out to be an upgrade. Guardiola calls him the “central block”. So are the modern-day sweeper-keepers, keeper-liberos. Not quite goalkeepers without arms as Busquets was once mocked, but goalkeeper with both arms and legs, goalkeeper who can be a blocker, dributor and playmaker.