Leeds United's goalkeeper search: Perri and Zentner interest but net cast far and wide

New York Times

3 days ago

Leeds United are shopping for a goalkeeper this summer. Illan Meslier is, after being dropped last season, not Daniel Farke's preferred No 1 as they return to the Premier League.
Karl Darlow and Alex Cairns are perfectly serviceable back-up options that also aid the club's homegrown quota in the division's squad rules. In a season when United should expect their goal to be under a lot of pressure, they need a commanding presence.
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Lyon's Lucas Perri and Mainz's Robin Zentner are on Leeds' shortlist but there will be more names that are not in the public domain at the time of writing.
The Athletic is not presenting a list of the goalkeepers Leeds definitely want to sign. This is an analysis of who performed well last year across Europe's big five leagues and, of them, who United could realistically acquire.
We started by looking at which goalkeepers prevented the most goals, a key attribute, last season. One way of quantifying goalkeepers' shot-stopping abilities is to look at their performance relative to post-shot expected goals (PSxG).
This metric estimates the quality of on-target shots given their placement within the goal frame, the angle from which they were taken and the distance from goal. It aims to measure how likely the average goalkeeper will save each shot.
Comparing post-shot expected goals with the number of goals actually conceded can help show how well they are keeping out efforts on goal, relative to the quality of shots they have faced. The goals prevented metric indicates whether they have underperformed or overperformed in line with expectation.
So here are some possible goalkeepers that would suit Farke's squad.
Lyon are in limbo around their league status for next season. Inevitably, someone of Perri's reputation is going to be far easier to acquire if his club drops into France's second tier.
Perri conceded 44 goals in 33 appearances last season, but the data shows he should have conceded 47.8 — he prevented 3.8 goals. That ranked him sixth in Ligue 1.
The 27-year-old, who is 6ft 5in, has only had that one season in Europe, which may put off some clubs but in his final season with Botafogo, in Brazil, he was exceptional, preventing 13.1 goals in a single campaign.
Lyon's head coach, Paulo Fonseca, described him as 'the best goalkeeper in the world' in March. Perri has been called up by Brazil too, but is yet to make his debut.
The other data available for Perri would suggest he is a goalkeeper who tends to stay on his line and tends to keep things relatively short with his distribution.
In the images below, he makes three saves in quick succession against Nantes. He gets down low to his left to divert Moses Simon's cross, but it runs to an attacker. Matthis Abline has a shot, but Perri has recovered to parry again.
Unfortunately, Nemanja Matic spoons his clearance into the air. Perri gets up again and leaps to claim the ball with Pedro Chirivella advancing on him.
The other name The Athletic knows Leeds have on their list. Zentner is a good example of someone who performed exceptionally last season, but for several years he was fairly mediocre in the Bundesliga.
The data shows he conceded 41 goals for Mainz against a PSxG of 45 and that had Zentner ranked fourth in the Bundesliga last season.
There was a similar overperformance in 2023-24, at a lower 2.2, but between 2017 and 2023, Zentner consistently conceded more goals than the data suggested he should. The graph below plots the goals prevented metric with a rolling 50-save average.
The statistics show he is a commanding goalkeeper, claims a lot of crosses and is generally happy to make sweeping actions far from his goal. Zentner ranked seventh of goalkeepers for the total number of defensive actions outside his penalty area last season.
The 30-year-old came close to winning his first call-up to the Germany squad in the spring. He's had arguably the best season of his career and clearly responded well to Bo Henriksen's coaching.
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Henriksen has a reputation for taking pressure off his players and has generally been reassuring when they have made mistakes. Zentner is a big unit at 6ft 4in and has a reputation as a good shot-stopper.
Farke has been open to recruiting from his homeland in the past and, generally, English clubs can find better value for money in Germany.
The 27-year-old prevented 7.2 goals last season, the second-best performer in the German top flight and 10th-best across Europe.
The German youth international, whose mother is English, became Augsburg's No 1 halfway through last season and did not look back. He made 19 appearances and through his run in the team there were some stellar individual performances. Against Stuttgart, Bochum and Bayern Munich, Dahmen recorded 11, nine and seven saves respectively.
Dahmen went 683 minutes without conceding through February and March, and even when he did eventually concede, it was from a penalty. That streak was the sixth-longest in Bundesliga history.
The above triple-save against Borussia Monchengladbach, after a corner, was particularly impressive.
What may put Leeds off is the small sample size for Dahmen. He is 27 and only has 63 Bundesliga appearances in his career, which was spent on Mainz's bench for a long time.
At 6ft 1in, he may not be big enough for the Premier League either. Dahmen claimed just six per cent of his crosses last season, but that metric can sometimes be unfair because many crosses are impossible to collect.
At 32 and with more than 250 appearances for Getafe, Soria may be difficult to land, even if his side finished 13th last season. But, of the four goalkeepers here, Soria is the most proven and has the best long-term record of preventing goals.
For the last seven seasons, Soria has consistently overperformed. Since 2018-19, Brice Samba, Walter Benitez, Thibaut Courtois, Alisson and Jan Oblak are the only goalkeepers who have prevented more goals in the big five divisions.
Last season was his best since 2019-20, as he conceded 39 goals against a PSxG of 42.
He has been crucial to Getafe's excellent defensive record since they returned to the top flight as a notoriously difficult team to break down under Jose Bordalas. They play direct, intense football and, as a result, Soria's distribution has been markedly no-nonsense.
No goalkeeper launched a higher proportion of their passes more than 40 yards (72.6 per cent) last season across Europe's top five leagues. That is not to say he can't adapt his game, but that may be something to consider if Farke wants to play out from the back.
If the manager did not want to remove any risk-tasking from the last line of his defence, Soria has proven he can send the ball, but then be adept at keeping it out when his defence is breached.