Home » Sport » 20 minutes – Courtois has become intractable again, and Real with

20 minutes – Courtois has become intractable again, and Real with

Football

The Belgian goalkeeper has contributed significantly to placing Real Madrid four units ahead of FC Barcelona five days from the end.

Wall

Thibaut Courtois has 16 clean sheets in 30 La Liga matches this season

AFP

Criticized in the fall, now in the running for the trophy for best goalkeeper in Liga: Belgian Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has become the emblem of the defensive severity found in Madrid, who rush towards the title before facing Athletic Bilbao Sunday.

At the head of the best defense in the Spanish championship, Courtois seems to have become intractable, with three matches in a row without conceding a goal (16 clean sheets in total this season in 30 La Liga matches) and an average of 0.63 goal conceded per game which makes him the most impassable goalkeeper in Real Madrid history.

“A goalkeeper for a championship,” headlined the sports daily Marca on Saturday, with a full page photo of a raging Courtois. “No Real Madrid goalkeeper has won the Zamora trophy (best Liga goalkeeper) in 12 seasons. Courtois aspires to his third title, “specifies the sports daily, who recalls that the 28-year-old Belgian porter has already raised it twice with Atlético de Madrid, in 2013 and 2014.

“He’s a huge goalkeeper, he always shows it”

Zinédine Zidane, Real Madrid coach

With only 18 goals conceded this season in the league, Thibaut Courtois is well above the best in the world in his post, the Slovenian from Atlético Jan Oblak (25 goals conceded in La Liga) and the German from Barça Marc-André ter Stegen (33 goals conceded), and strongly contributed to placing Real (74 points) four units ahead of rival Barça (70 points) five days from the end.

“He’s a huge goalkeeper, he always shows it. I will not say if it is the best in the world or not, everyone has their opinion and I mine. But what he does with us, the numbers, it’s impressive, ”complimented Zinedine Zidane this Saturday at a pre-match press conference.

“He demonstrated that he was a great goalkeeper, that he is one of the best goalkeepers,” had already rejoiced the coach at the start of the year. “After a complicated passage, as is common in a career, he got up. He knew how to keep working, never give up, believe in what he was, and transmit energy to others. ”

Complicated moments

Because since his return to Madrid in the summer of 2018, everything has not been easy for the Belgian international at the 79 selections. In competition with Keylor Navas, who participated in the three consecutive Champions Leagues won by Real Madrid de Zidane between 2016 and 2018 before joining PSG in 2019, Courtois returns to the Spanish capital after a detour by Chelsea (2014-2018) , but this time at the “White House”. A change of club badly lived by the supporters of Atlético, who describe it as “traitor”.

In this context, the Belgian is having a difficult start, like the complicated last season crossed by the Madrilenians, before Zidane’s return to the bench in March 2019. And his start to the 2019/20 season does not start well: after seven goals conceded during the first eight days of the championship, the humiliation against Paris SG at the Parc des Princes on September 19 (3-0) and the raging 2-2 against Bruges at the Bernabeu on October 1 in the group stage of the Champions League , Courtois was the target of criticism, just like Zidane, threatened.

Oblak’s records in the viewfinder

But since then, Zidane has regained its indisputable status, Real has returned to leadership with the best defense of the five major European championships … and Courtois has once again become a wall, solid in aerial play and good on its line.

Already pretty tight before the three months of forced break by the pandemic, Real de Courtois has become almost impassable since the resumption of the Spanish championship on June 11, with only two goals conceded in six matches (2-1 against Real Sociedad and 3-1 against Eibar for the recovery), before his trip to Bilbao for the 34th day.

Last year, Real ended the season with 46 goals conceded, against only 21 this season five games from the end of the championship. And Courtois will still have a goal to reach next season: the 24 “clean sheets” and the average of 0.47 goals conceded per game over a La Liga season, records set by Jan Oblak in 2016 at Atlético, which are already out of reach of the Belgian this season.

(AFP)

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.