The UEFA Super Cup is on Wednesday, and Gianluigi Donnarumma won’t be playing in it. Just a few months after he was the hero of Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League campaign, the club has chosen not to register him for the game.
The Italian goalkeeper has 1 year left on his contract, and with the two sides nowhere close on contract terms, it appears he’s very much for sale this window. Rumored fees have been in the €25-30m range.
You will be unsurprised to hear that Manchester United is interested, as they’ve been regularly linked to Donnarumma for a while now, and Andre Onana has caught a ton of criticism for his recent performances. Quite a bit more surprising is that Manchester City is interested, with Ederson having been regularly linked to a move to either Turkey or Saudi Arabia.
I had the thought that neither United or City should be spending a lot of money on an old player, but Donnarumma is, astonishingly, still just 26 years old. It just feels like he’s been around forever because, well… he has.
He was first choice for AC Milan when he was 16 years old. But he’s entering what should be a normal goalkeeper’s prime, and if he was handed a 5-year contract, should theoretically not be in a decline phase yet by the end of it if he follows a normal goalkeeper aging curve.
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The Transfer Flow
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The Transfer Flow
If you’re wondering why PSG want to move on from Donnarumma after he was so incredible in Champions League, it’s because he was pretty bad over the larger sample of games in Ligue 1. He was a below league average shot-stopper, with a couple of genuine howlers contributing to this — he even let in a 0.01 psxG shot...
But the previous season, he was the best shot stopper in Ligue 1, while still being slightly above average in Champions League.
So I’m not buying any argument about him being secretly sneaky bad, or declining sharply. He’s a good goalkeeper.
I think it’s smart to buy low off of a weird down year. He’d probably be better than Onana for United. He can’t replace Ederson’s play with the ball at his feet for City, but who can? From City’s perspective, these moves make sense if they can come out ahead financially.
Ederson vs. Donnarumma is probably a push production-wise, so if they can get a big fee for Ederson, it’s a sensible move. Man United are obviously not going to get more for Onana than they’d pay for Donnarumma, but the upgrade in quality is probably worth the difference.