The night Lunin won in the locker room and why Courtois’ final against Liverpool was even better | Soccer | Sports

When Brahim finished the round of interviews that MVP forced him to go through and finally reached the locker room, he sat next to Lunin and asked to take a photo of the two of them holding the trophy. The Malaga man has just scored a fantastic goal, but the match against RB Leipzig was half won thanks to his genius and the Ukrainian’s nine saves.

Lunine had just reached the summit, after a long and discouraging journey. To the extreme difficulty of fighting for the position of Courtois, who was among the three best goalkeepers in the world, was added the distance from the rest of the team which marked the character of the Ukrainian, between icy and introverted. He was a far cry from the expansive Courtois, who both hesitated and shouted on the pitch or gave long explanations in front of the cameras about what happened to the team on a difficult night. Lunin, on the other hand, orbited like a satellite somewhat distant from the center of the group, without giving them any reason to have blind confidence in him. Until his all-consuming task at Leipzig, with echoes of that of Courtois in the 2022 Champions League final: both with nine saves and a clean sheet.

“His best evening in the locker room,” says a club source of Lunin’s reception after the match in Leipzig. “A spectacular ovation from everyone.” Not only that. The first message Vinicius wrote in X was for him: “What a great game, Andriy Lunin. »And in the next one, he referred to Brahim: “What a player and what a great goal. » Tchouameni also celebrated the one who, as an emergency central defender, experienced very closely the common effort to protect the goal. The Frenchman wrote “Lunin” and placed a sheriff’s star next to it.

The Ukrainian showed the traits of the goalkeeper Real Madrid thought he could become when they signed him in 2018 after he was voted best goalkeeper at the U20 World Cup. “He played an exceptional match,” Ancelotti said. “His best game.” Opta has released damning information about its nine stops. Since they set records, during the 2003/04 season, only one Madrid goalkeeper has scored so many without conceding a single goal: Courtois in the final in Paris. Two goalkeepers in 20 years.

The Belgian has always cast a powerful shadow over Lunin. For months, the technical staff considered that the Ukrainian felt that he could not compete for the position and that this slowed down his progress. They saw him stagnate, which led to shaky performances that fueled the team’s distrust. Until Courtois tore the cruciate ligament in his left knee. The club immediately recruited Kepa Arrizabalaga, who he invested from the first moment as a starter. But something had changed. “Kepa is not Thibaut,” Ancelotti’s team told him. And he picked up the pace until beating the goalkeeper on loan from Chelsea, thus completing an evening in Leipzig which is reminiscent of Courtois’ masterpiece in Paris. Although Lunine is still far from it.

The Belgian’s nine saves were much more complicated than those of the Ukrainian. To compare them, the StatsBomb metric that evaluates the difficulty of shots a goalkeeper faces, post-shot expected goals (PSxG), helps. In Germany, Lunin faced a PSxG of 0.77, meaning each shot had an average difficulty of 0.08 expected goal. This means that shots taken in the same positional circumstances of the attacker, defenders and goalkeeper end in a goal in 8% of cases.

In Paris, the situation was much more difficult: Courtois faced 3.48 PSxG, which means that each shot was on average five times more difficult than those faced by Lunin, 0.39 expected goal.

If we examine the photos one by one, we also see notable differences. The hardest shot Lunin faced was Sesko’s in the 2nd minute with 0.26 PSxG. In Paris, Courtois stopped five at least twice as dangerous: 0.70, 0.64, 0.63, 0.59 and 0.51. The three most venomous came from Salah, particularly inspired. But the Egyptian found himself facing a goalkeeper who seemed to be in a trance. “I felt like no one could score for me today,” he said. The same monster that stopped Lunin and that the Ukrainian approached in Leipzig.

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