David De Gea's troubled beginnings

Edwin van der Sar couldn't believe what he was seeing. This was new and it was not necessarily better.

Rather, it was the 18-yard box on his very first game for Juventus in 1999. In good faith, Van der Sar attempted one of his routine Ajax passes to the centre-half. He had, after all, been told in negotiations that Juventus would adapt the Dutch style in order to integrate their new  goalkeeper.

However, on receiving the ball, defender Paolo Montero panicked, pummelled it away and then proceeded to berate Van der Sar. On the line, manager Carlo Ancelotti was doing the same.

The Dutchman was soon nicknamed 'Van der Gol' and routinely mocked by Italian media. As David Winner tells the story, "within a year he was consulting a therapist and telling his agent he no longer trusted himself even to catch a ball."

Given Van der Sar's unflappable image at Manchester United, the anecdote should put a different perspective on David De Gea's anxious first two games for the club. The Spaniard has, admittedly, made at least two awful errors. But, like Van der Sar back then, he's also had to get used to a new country and a new culture.


De Gea, of course, is only 20. At Juventus in the summer of 1999, Van der Sar was 28. But the Dutchman still had to go to the less demanding surrounds of Fulham to effectively remember how to be a goalkeeper and rebuild his confidence.

The issue raises a wider point about young goalkeepers and world-class level - either in terms of club or quality  goalkeepers. Unlike in almost every other position, the two don't come together that often. 

With foreign goalkeepers such as De Gea, there are a number of external factors like the language barrier and basic acclimatisation. But, essentially, the problem is experience. At a big club where every error is exaggerated because of the importance of each result and isolation of the position, goalkeepers need an awful lot of experience to complement their existing talent.


Even then, though, both Casillas and Van der Sar were already at big clubs who had invested a lot of time in nurturing them. And Casillas was also at Real Madrid at a unique time in their history.


With the Galactico project gradually leaving the first XI increasingly unbalanced, Casillas was often "overexposed and under-protected". Many goalkeeping coaches argue, however, that this is better for a young goalkeeper as it keeps them busy without thinking while simultaneously building their confidence. Buffon certainly reckons so. He claims picking Parma first was the most important decision of his career.

But the deeper question in all of this, then, is why Sir Alex Ferguson opted for promise  instead of proven experience? Might it yet be an unnecessary risk to United's season? While any further De Gea errors are clearly forgivable in that context, Ferguson's in actually buying him wouldn't quite be the same.

But the reason he has is because all at Old Trafford are convinced that the recent slips have been no more than aberrations. De Gea is considered to be another Casillas, to have both the talent and mentality to overcome any shortfall in experience. And many of the most learned voices in Spain echo this.

There was one caveat though: "If nothing odd happens, he will succeed. He is only 20; he will reach his peak at 30. There is loads of time."

Except when it comes to the exaggerated expectations of a very top club, time is rarely afforded.


source: www.soccernet.com