Feel free to get out your world’s smallest violin, because sympathy will be in short supply. But what this summer is showing us, again, is that being an elite goalkeeper doesn’t mean you’ll get much attention in the transfer market, at least compared to their peers in other areas of the pitch.
Exhibit A is Paris Saint-Germain’s Gianluigi Donnarumma here, but there are evident parallels with Manchester City’s Éderson and AC Milan’s Mike Maignan. You may have your personal favorites, but all three are comfortably among the top 10 in the world at their positions — including in this year’s FC 100 — and some would have them top five. Were they top 10 in the world as wingers, center backs, strikers or holding midfielders, their agents’ phones would be blowing up and they’d have dozens of offers on the table. Their clubs would be bending over backward to get them to extend.
But that’s not the case at all. In fact, PSG (Lucas Chevalier from Lille isn’t done, but it’s close) and Man City (James Trafford from Burnley, and with a record fee for a British keeper) are bringing in expensive younger replacements. As for potential suitors, there’s been talk of Donnarumma to Manchester United, Éderson to Galatasaray and Maignan to Chelsea (the latter early in the summer), but very little that seems concrete.
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At first glance, it will seem odd. Donnarumma is 26, the captain of Italy, and a European Championship and Champions League winner. Éderson is 31 and has been a mainstay of Pep Guardiola’s City and winner of multiple Premier League crowns, as well as the Champions League. Maignan turned 30 just last month, has arguably been the best keeper in Serie A over the past four years and is France’s No. 1. You should be able to sign any one of them at a knockdown price this summer or as free agents a year from now.
But, hey, they’re keepers, and a different set of rules seems to apply to them.
It’s partly structural, of course. You can be one of the best left wingers in the world and join a club that already has one of the best left wingers in the world, and the coach will find a way to play you both at the same time. It happened at Real Madrid (with mixed results) last season, when Kylian Mbappé joined Vinícius Junior. With keepers, you don’t have that luxury though, to be fair, Éderson is so good with his feet that maybe he’d even make a decent center back.
Because these are all high earners — especially Donnarumma, who is currently earning around $23 million a season — there’s a very limited number of clubs that have the financial clout, prestige (nobody wants to disappear off the map in a World Cup year) and a pressing need for an upgrade between the sticks.
But part of it is that football doesn’t really seem to value keepers the same way. Consider this list of market valuations from Transfermarkt. It has four guys — Donnarumma, Porto’s Diogo Costa, Arsenal’s David Raya and Borussia Dortmund’s Gregor Kobel — joint-top of their list at a valuation of €40 million. Admittedly, Transfermarkt isn’t gospel, with age and contract duration playing into it. But their list of highest-valued players runs to No. 147 before you get to Donnarumma. I mean, are there really 146 players in the world who are worth more than the PSG keeper? Does that sound right?
Donnarumma’s first agent, the late Mino Raiola (he’s now represented by Mino’s cousin Vincenzo), argued that a top goalkeeper’s contribution was comparable to that of a Galactico, an Erling Haaland or an Mbappe, and therefore his wages ought to be comparable, too. He certainly delivered for his client, getting Donnarumma to ink a $14 million deal when he was just 18 and his current monster contract with PSG at age 22.
Right now, however, another quantum leap forward salary-wise seems out of the question. In fact, according to reports, PSG’s latest contract extension offer is chock-full of appearance bonuses rather than guaranteed money, and it certainly doesn’t contemplate a more than 50% raise like the one he got when he moved to the Parc des Princes.
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There are always external factors to muddy the waters. Donnarumma is on enormous wages and he’s not great with the ball at his feet, which is a quality some coaches — such as his current boss, Luis Enrique — covet for their style of play. Éderson missed games through injury in each of his past two seasons (and was outright dropped by Guardiola at one point last year), with Trafford counting as a homegrown player. Milan took a sizable financial hit when they failed to qualify for Europe last season, and Maignan also took his knocks in the past two campaigns.
But the fact remains: If they played different positions, would they be getting this treatment? It can’t be the fact that they only touch the ball on average less than 40 times a game, because so do center forwards, can it?
Could it be that the game — in particular coaching and recruitment, both the analytics nerds and the old-school eye-test scouts — haven’t fully wrapped their heads around how to value keepers? Possibly because the vast majority of ex-players turned coaches or recruiters or scouts are not former keepers? And that, because a key goalkeeping howler stays fresh in our minds far more than a glaring miss from a striker, let alone a misplaced pass from a midfielder or a stumble from a defender, they are somehow penalized?
The impression is that it’s some combination of the above. And that — rightly or wrongly — clubs ultimately see keepers as interchangeable, the margin between an outstanding one and a merely good one being much smaller than with other roles.
