From Bravo to Donnarumma: Manchester City’s goalkeeping evolution under Guardiola

Signing a goalkeeper with a reputation as lofty as Gianluigi Donnarumma would usually register as a powerful statement of intent but Manchester City’s addition of Italy’s Euro 2020 hero, the keeper whose saves guided Paris Saint-Germain to a first Champions League last season, has been met with a rather mixed reaction.

City’s troubled start to the season adds confusion, so too Pep Guardiola’s case history with goalkeepers. Ederson was beloved by City fans for being a maverick and played a key role in the team’s serial title wins. Just 32, relatively young for players in his position, a dalliance with a move to Saudi Arabia last year and the interest of Fenerbahce – the club he has joined – hastened his exit.

That Stefan Ortega, a lesser keeper, was turned to last season by Guardiola suggested terminal frustrations from someone for whom Ederson’s mix of ball-playing ability and acrobatic saves was once ideal. James Trafford’s summer return to City from Burnley for a not inconsiderable fee of £27m also foretold the Brazilian’s exit. Trafford’s struggles so far, in defeats to Tottenham and Brighton, appear to have forced City’s hand into doing a deal because it could be done rather than it making complete sense.

Manchester United are understood to have been a competitor for Donnarumma’s signature, even a favoured destination. Instead, to meet their own keeping problem, they have signed Belgium’s Senne Lammens. The demands of Donnarumma’s representatives, led by Enzo Raiola, who took his cousin Mino Raiola’s client list when the super agent died in 2022, were beyond the wage limits United were prepared to go to. The same went for Aston Villa’s Emiliano Martínez.

In a reverse of United stealing in to land Alexis Sánchez in 2018, or United returning for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2021 when he seemed set for Eastlands, City snapped up a goalkeeper whose high wages no longer fitted the PSG structure either. Hugo Viana is the sporting director at City now, Txiki Begiristain, so long Guardiola’s guiding hand, having stepped down, and the club’s business has taken on a different hue. Guardiola has so far struggled to assimilate the four signings made in January, let alone the seven players coming in this summer, including three goalkeepers, Marcus Bettinelli completing the trio.

The question is whether Donnarumma was bought for club or manager; Guardiola’s long-term future is nebulous despite his contract extension to 2027, a summer interview with GQ magazine making mention of his fatigue and the heavy pressures of the City job.

View image in fullscreen Pep Guardiola’s goalkeeper predicament began when he first joined Manchester City, opting to drop Joe Hart for Willy Caballero. Photograph: John Sibley/Reuters

Roll back to 2016, the summer of Guardiola’s arrival, and almost his first move was to replace the popular Joe Hart with the ill-fated Claudio Bravo, the Chilean bought from Barcelona and whose ball-playing ability was favoured over the then England No 1’s chest-beating heroism and reflex saves. The Bravo experiment, which failed once he appeared unable to make regulation saves, was discontinued. Willy Caballero, a veteran, played instead of Hart, who was loaned to Torino and subsequently lost his way until a late-career revival at Celtic.

The doubts on Donnarumma centre on his lack of ball-playing ability, a facet so important to Guardiola. Statistics show he was nowhere near as involved in his team’s buildups last season as, for example, David Raya at Arsenal or Alisson at Liverpool, the latter the gold standard, pairing traditional save-making with contributions to overall play. Alisson averaged 31.7 passes per 90 minutes in the Premier League, compared to Donnarumma, 23.4 in Ligue 1, with an average of six long passes from the Italian to Ederson’s 9.4. At PSG, Luis Enrique, Guardiola’s former teammate, of a similar philosophy, has been happy to forge on with Lucas Chevalier, signed from Lille, another modish hybrid of keeper/playmaker.

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What have seemed since Hart’s demise to be the non-negotiables of any goalkeeper playing for Guardiola are likely to be bucked by the new arrival. Perhaps it signals a change in approach from a coach unafraid to innovate, who has talked about the more physical, aggressive game his teams must now deal with.

Despite some downturns, Donnarumma has proved himself a brilliant goalkeeper in the traditional sense, at 26, with much ahead of him. Though Guardiola, perhaps his time at Barcelona with Lionel Messi aside, has always bent teams to his own, exacting specifications rather than star players.

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