Matt Pyzdrowski is a coach and former goalkeeper who played in the United States and Sweden. He serves as a goalkeeping analyst for The Athletic.
It is 15 months since David de Gea last played a game of competitive football.
The Spaniard was content to wait for the right opportunity — not unreasonably thinking his status and achievements would be of interest to Europe’s top clubs — but offers were not forthcoming. On Friday, he signed for Fiorentina, just a week before their Serie A season begins.
De Gea turns 34 in November and last kicked a ball in Manchester United’s FA Cup final defeat to Manchester City in May 2023. He has not even trained regularly with a team during that period.
De Gea may have won the Premier League Golden Glove, awarded for keeping the most clean sheets, in his final season at United but Fiorentina are taking a big risk in signing him. Fifteen months is a long time in most professional industries, but in football it is an eternity.
David De Gea with the 2022-23 Golden Glove (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
The question now is: what challenges will he face after such a lengthy absence from the game?
There’s a distinct difference between being injured and being on holiday, which De Gea essentially has been for the past year and a half. After an injury, one of the biggest obstacles is that you have to build your body up again and work incredibly hard on strength training to build up your muscles and bone strength (which will have weakened due to your time away from the game) even before you get back onto the pitch. It’s only after you do that, that you are finally allowed to return to the field and train the technique and tactical side that is so important for every goalkeeper.
However, De Gea has been able to remain relatively fit. He has combined physical and goalkeeper-specific training three to four times a week with playing padel, one of his favourite hobbies, several hours a week. If he’s trained as effectively and efficiently as it has been reported, it’s quite possible he hasn’t lost too much from a pure technical perspective — especially given that goalkeepers often train by themselves under normal circumstances.
David de Gea will quickly be able to get back to speed technically (Paul Kane/Getty Images)
The biggest adjustment from a technical perspective and the hardest thing for him to replicate in individual training having been away from the game so long is doing everything at speed and under the type of pressure he would have been exposed to in a professional environment.
While De Gea has been able to work on his handling, reflexes, and footwork — one of the reasons United were prepared to let him go in the first place — they aren’t the areas I would be most concerned with after missing so much time. Handling, reflexes, and footwork are fundamentals that come back to you fairly quickly if you play at the very top.
Of greater concern are his positioning and decision making. These are the hardest things to replicate in training and take time to master after an extended period on the sideline, regardless of the circumstances. The only way to be comfortable in these skills again is through game time.
In 2012, I missed half a year due to injury, and regaining these two aspects of my game was the biggest hurdle I faced. I constantly found myself a step slow, or out of position, and my game management suffered. I had a tough time reading through balls and crosses in particular. I might start to come for a ball, only to realise I had misjudged its final destination, then back off at the last second. It didn’t always lead to errors, but my indecisiveness eroded the cohesion that all goalkeepers need with their back line and caused uncertainty for the rest of the team
You can practise these areas of your game all you want, but it is something entirely different to be able to do it during a match, when the game comes at you faster, the decisions must be more accurate, and the margins for error are smaller than they are in training.
Then there is the mental side of the game. It’s not too difficult for the best goalkeepers to keep themselves in a good place when they’re playing and training every day. After a long time away, however, the swings in emotion are more extreme. You can go from feeling on top of the world one minute, to being crippled by doubts the next.
David de Gea experienced many highs and lows at Manchester United (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
Initially, I was so thankful and appreciative to play again after my return that I did receive an adrenaline boost and was able to ride that high. However, once that honeymoon ended, and the grind of the day-to-day began to take hold, I crashed back down to reality. My rustiness began to show and frustration set in.
Rather than say something positive, my self-talk turned negative. I’d say something to myself like, “Am I ever going to get past this next hurdle or is this problem going to stick around?” In my lowest moments, I honestly thought I’d never regain the form I had before my injury.
All of these factors create a player feeling more pressure, stress, and uncertainty, which inevitably affects the rest of his performance. You start to tense up when you distribute the ball, which leads to poor and inaccurate kicks. You worry about being hit while coming for a cross and drop balls you should have caught because you go up soft into a challenge.
It isn’t fun. As a goalkeeper, confidence is such an important factor to your success. If you feel like Superman you will be Superman, but the moment you start to think you are normal like Clark Kent, you are!
De Gea has a stronger mental capacity than most but playing for over a decade with United isn’t easy, and the level of intense scrutiny can be overwhelming for even the best goalkeepers. The fact that he lasted as long as he did is one of his greatest achievements.
His time away from the game has hopefully allowed him to do some reflection and mentally recover after the constant stress and judgment he’s been under the past decade or so. It may even help him as he looks to regain his form at Fiorentina.
A transition period should be expected, although his distribution will once again be of focus. De Gea was often comfortable — sometimes even excellent — at playing the ball out from the back when he had time to do so. It was when teams applied pressure, and his time was limited, that he would struggle. Considering he has been away from the game so long, and the fact that it is impossible to replicate these types of situations without consistent game time and high-pressure environments, it’s fair to assume this area of his game will not have improved.
The hope for De Gea is that he will step into a situation with a team that tries to minimise the risk with the ball at his feet and instead try and make things as simple as possible for him.
One of the teams who does this incredibly well also just so happens to be the team who gave him his professional debut at 17: Atletico Madrid. Their goalkeeper Jan Oblak is stylistically very similar to De Gea, and also very average with the ball at his feet. What Atletico’s manager Diego Simeone has done well is adapt his system to fit his goalkeeper.
Jan Oblak also struggles with the ball at his feet (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Rather than be expected to successfully spray the ball at various lengths across the pitch, he is largely required to be the main pivot at the back and play shorter and easier passes wide to his centre-backs or up the middle to his midfielders. This has allowed Atletico to continue playing a ‘modern’ system, while almost completely taking the pressure off the goalkeeper in the process.
De Gea was already entering the twilight of his career before his unexpected hiatus. And even if he is able to regain his shot-stopping ability, which remained vital during his final season at United, the emphasis top clubs place on goalkeepers who are strong in possession and can sweep and dominate their box, won’t have worked in his favour.
He still has many fine qualities and it will be very interesting to see how he gets on in Italy.
(Top photo: Albert Perez/Getty Images)
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