Karius could be the next De Gea
lorIS KarIUS has the best record for clean sheets in the champions league this season, five in eight matches.
not all of that success will be down to him, obviously, and not all of the opponents were top quality — the run includes two matches against Maribor and the 7-0 annihilation of Spartak Moscow — but Karius also shut out Porto twice, the first champions league goalkeeper to do so since Gianluigi Buffon of Juventus last March.
Without doubt, he is getting better and more confident all the time, perhaps as a result of having a run in the team. It has been said that Jurgen Klopp needs to buy a toplevel goalkeeper if he is to stand a chance of landing the title with liverpool, but maybe Karius will train on. He isn’t the first foreign keeper to find the Premier league difficult before finding his feet.
The keeper now widely acknowledged as the best in the league, and by some as the best in the world, had an incredibly shaky start here.
David de Gea could make a case to be Manchester United’s most valuable player, so many times has he come to their rescue recently, but his opening games were calamitous.
His mistakes put United 2-0 down in the community Shield and he had a nightmare on his Premier league debut against West Brom.
He shipped six against Manchester city, was blamed for a 3-2 defeat by Blackburn and even 18 months in was considered culpable for a lastminute Tottenham equaliser.
Sir alex Ferguson maintained that De Gea’s critics were idiots.
and he made them look so because, gradually, he became the best. a performance against real Madrid was the watershed, now that faltering start has all but faded from memory.
Who remembers De Gea as a frail specimen, weak on crosses? nobody. We may view Karius through such rose-tinted spectacles someday.