Until the end of the match against Benfica (1-1), Gianluigi Donnarumma was decisive.
Jérôme Alonzo, the former goalkeeper of PSG, now a consultant for the L'Équipe channel, looks back on this successful evening and its consequences in the season of the Italian European champion.
How do you judge Donnarumma's game against Benfica?
JEROME ALONZO
.
We needed a big match in the Champions League.
So it comes at the right time.
Afterwards, it is to be confirmed because in fact I find him falsely sure of himself at the foot.
But other than that, what else matters?
It's a goalkeeper who makes you four saves and without that you lose the game.
Without a doubt.
You can explain it to me however you want: Wednesday evening, if you don't have a big Gigio, well you end up with one point less and above all three points more for the others and that changes your life.
Juve play Haifa twice and will probably win twice.
If you lose in Lisbon you are not well because you are going to Turin in three weeks.
So Donnarumma's game on Wednesday is very, very important for him and for Paris.
Which of the four parades did you like the most?
The first is magnificent
(he intervenes with his left leg against Gonçalo Ramos in the 8th minute)
.
At the foot.
I adore.
That was one of my stops!
(laughs).
He took everything from me!
No, this save is beautiful because he is very intelligent too.
He understands very quickly that he cannot lengthen the body because it comes too fast and too close.
From there, the reflex is very good and the execution is perfect because he gets his leg out a hundred miles an hour.
Will this match carry it?
I hope.
It would be good to follow up because he is the first to know that an isolated match does not count.
But he is the first to also know that a match like that can completely launch his season.
And above all to silence the critics or in any case the doubts.
There was a crazy atmosphere and it's funny but I think he's a goalkeeper who needs that.
And besides the Euro
(won by Italy against England at Wembley)
proves it to me: it needs it to be warm.
That's why, all things considered, I find myself a little in him because there are goalkeepers like that who paradoxically are really good only under great pressure.
I have the impression that Donnarumma is made of this wood.
I found it really comfortable.
His “body language” really appealed to me.
He had a mixture, like when I rediscovered him at the Euro, of assurance and solidity.
We had the impression that the Luz stadium could have collapsed, he would have said:
it's good I manage the case
.
He must remain vigilant on his kicking game, right?
It's an eternal downside but it's not his doing and which for me is a real problem in modern football: a lot is asked of goalkeepers.
In Lisbon, we found a great goalkeeper.
And whatever others say from my fellow consultants or coaches: for me a great goalkeeper, even in 2022, he must first make saves.
So.
Because the points won are not kicking.
There are very, very few keepers in the history of modern football who have changed their team's game on foot when you look closely.
Neuer?
Alisson Becker perhaps a little in Liverpool?
But otherwise they do not change the game of their team the goalkeepers.
What changes your team's game when you're a goalkeeper is winning points like Donnarumma did against Benfica by making four magnificent saves.
So we have to highlight the saves of the goalkeepers and stop a little with the kicking game.
Yes we have to accept the evolution, I agree.
Would I have been able to do it?
Probably not.
But let's stop with that.
Donnarumma proved it to us once again.