Gundogan: Bravo is best at penalties, hands down

ILKAY Gundogan has hailed stand-in goalkeeper Claudio Bravo for his Carabao Cup shoot-out heroics.

The Chilean saved two spotkicks, after stopping three penalties in the Confederations Cup semi-final win over Portugal earlier this year.

“I think he’s a penalty killer!” said Gundogan. “He showed it with Chile as well.

“Even for us as outfield players, but I think especially for a goalkeeper, when you don’t play every week, when you don’t get that rhythm, it’s quite challenging.

“And when you play 120 minutes, for a goalkeeper, it’s more about concentration, you have to always be 100 per cent concentrated.

“Especially the one-on-ones he saved, he was just brilliant.

“Last week in the training, we had a few penalties and he saved a lot of them.

“We are just happy to have him and he was definitely man-of-the-match.”

Gundogan opted out of taking a spot-kick at the end of a gruelling game as he nursed an injury.

“Normally I would also have taken a penalty but I was scared that when I shoot something bad would happen,” he said.

“The guys did great. In the end, we deserved to win. Especially in the first half, we should have finished the game.

“At the end, we made it tough for ourselves but the most important thing was to win and make it to the next round.” Kyle Walker