The best player of the Euro had only 9 saves in the whole championship!

Gianluigi Donnarumma has undoubtedly made his mark in the history of the Euros. He saved penalties in the semi-final and the final to secure Italy’s overall victory. Whether he deserved the award for best player of the tournament is open to speculation, but the bare fact is that he was a very important factor in Italy’s success. Anyway, let’s look at this in a little more detail.

Immediately after the final clash with England, Gianluigi Donnarumma received the best player of the tournament award from UEFA. He then celebrated and then quickly travelled to Paris where he signed a five-year contract with PSG.

The Parisians got their hands on the best player of the tournament essentially for free. Donnarumma is only 22 years old and is already seasoned with big games, which he can do on top of that.

But watch out! He only made 9 saves in the whole tournament. For comparison, Tomas Vaclik successfully stopped 14 shots.

The Swiss Sommer, who was the best in this discipline in the whole tournament, tamed 21 shot attempts!

Nine successful saves in this metric is equal to the 17th place among all goalkeepers of the Euro. On the other hand, the 22 year old goalkeeper played the most minutes of any player in the tournament (718) and his great defense is also his calling card. Goalkeepers should be excellent communicators.

Donnarumma didn’t even dominate the statistics in number of clean sheets or save percentage. Italy’s final rival, Englishman Jordan Pickford, had the highest number of nil saves (5). The Everton goalkeeper also dominated the metric of save success rate (88.2%). The Italian hero finished third with Tomas Vaclik at 75%.

Sources: UEFA, FBREF