Donnarumma: 'Courtois is the best goalkeeper in the world'
Suraj Radia
- 31 May 2022 19:10 BST
- 3 min read
Gianluigi Donnarumma has hailed Thibaut Courtois as the best goalkeeper in Europe following the Belgian's heroics for Real Madrid in the Champions League final.
Courtois put in a man of the match performance to shut out Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain shotstopper Donnarumma was full of praise for his counterpart.
“He is the best goalkeeper in Europe, without doubt,” the Italian said. “Yesterday I saw the incredible game he had, he made great saves and kept Real Madrid on their feet until the end.”
"It affects me a bit to see that we could have been in the final, but unfortunately football is like that.”
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Is Courtois the best goalkeeper in the world?
Courtois has been in magnificent form for Real this season and comfortably boasted the highest save percentage of any keeper in the Champions League with 80%.
He also had the best post-shot xG with +5.1 and achieved the feat with the highest volume of shots faced, the most by any Champions League keeper in nearly 20 years.
In La Liga, he narrowly missed out on the Zamora trophy for the lowest goals-to-game ratio, with Sevilla's Yassine Bounou achieving 0.77 per game compared to Courtois' 0.81.
The ex-Genk keeper has cemented his case for the title of 'best in the world', particularly compared to his rivals such as Manchester City's Ederson and Liverpool's Alisson.
Courtois' nine saves in the final was the same number that Alisson had made in the entire tournament while his 59 saves was more than Ederson had made in 37 Premier League games.
Courtois blocking out the haters ❌ pic.twitter.com/gxDBSywvGn
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) May 28, 2022
The 30-year-old spoke of the disrespect he had faced by English media and admitted he had been fuelled by the negativity following his big money move from Chelsea in 2018.
He had initially struggled for form during his first season in Spain, much to the delight of Chelsea fans after forcing a move away from Stamford Bridge.
But the Belgian ace had the final laugh and could even be considered a favourite for this year's Ballon d'Or in a dramatic turnaround.
