Champions League finals can be won by goalkeepers. They can be lost by them, too. Real Madrid would not have beaten Liverpool in Paris in 2022 had it not been for the performance of arguably the world’s best goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois. The Spanish team were second best that night but Courtois won his battle with Mo Salah and Real went home with the trophy. Again.
The same teams had met in Kyiv in 2018, of course. That version of Liverpool wasn’t really ready to win Europe’s most coveted prize but a calamitous contribution from the German, Loris Karius didn’t help. Real won that one 3-1 and Karius and his career never really recovered.
So it goes without saying that Saturday in Budapest represents a big night for Arsenal’s David Raya. It’s arguably the biggest of his career, given that – peculiarly – he has not yet been elevated to first pick for the Spanish national team.
Raya is the best goalkeeper in the Premier League these days. With Alisson Becker at Liverpool and Emi Martinez at Aston Villa trending backwards – if only marginally – and the Italian Gianluigi Donnarumma not quite bringing the absolute security to the Manchester City defence that Pep Guardiola had hoped, Raya’s closest modern challenger is Everton’s Jordan Pickford.
Arsenal’s defence has helped him. Mikel Arteta’s team gave up an average of just 2.5 shots on target per Premier League game this season and that – unsurprisingly – is the lowest in Europe’s main five divisions. Nevertheless, the improvement in Raya has been clear over the last two seasons. He is 30-years-old now, which is somewhere around the peak years for most top-class goalkeepers. And the authority, confidence and athleticism of his goalkeeping can be traced back to a huge decision made by Arteta early in the 2023-24 season.
It was after a game at Everton’s Goodison Park in September 2023 that the Arsenal manager tried to explain away his decision to elevate his summer loan signing above his previous year’s number one Aaron Ramsdale. Like a father trying to choose between two favourite sons, Arteta didn’t have the confidence to be completely honest, claiming that he would rotate his two keepers throughout the season and would even consider replacing one with the other partway through an individual game.
It was a moment that maybe needed public clarity. For the truth that was obvious to all was that, four league games in to the season, Arteta had simply dropped his number one but simply didn’t have the heart to say so. Over the rest of that season, Ramsdale was to make precisely two league appearances – both against Raya’s parent club Brentford against whom he was not allowed to play.
‘It was a huge decision by Mikel and it really hurt him to do it,’ says a well-placed Arsenal source. ‘He loved Aaron and the truth is he hadn’t done anything wrong. It’s just that sometimes a team needs an upgrade to go where it needs to go. Even if it’s just a 5 per cent uptick, it needs to be done without sentiment. This is what Mikel decided the team needed and he was right wasn’t he?’
The different career paths of the two goalkeepers since that time has been stark. Raya has established himself as one of the world’s best keepers while Ramsdale has endured a relegation season back at his old club Southampton and now a season spent largely on the bench while on loan at Newcastle. He was England’s number two back in September 2023 and his demotion caused a stir. Even his father said some things on social media that may have been best left unsaid. But now Ramsdale is not in Thomas Tuchel’s squad for this summer’s World Cup and was never going to be.
Arsenal have simply moved on and sometimes that’s the way it has to be. Arteta has, during his six-and-half-years at the club, proved adept at making these decisions and the vast majority have proven to be the right ones in terms of clarity and indeed timing. The Scottish defender Kieran Tierney helped Arteta through his testing early days and was captain at one stage. When an upgrade became available in Oleksandr Zinchenko, Tierney was gone. Zinchenko also served a purpose for a while as Arteta sought a bit of City’s winning mentality but is now playing his football at Ajax.
Other names on the list of those who have felt the cold wind of Arteta change blow them out of the door are high-profile. Mesut Ozil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Granit Xhaka stand out. Some of those decisions caused ripples inside Arsenal. Aubameyang – for example – scored vital goals as Arsenal won the FA Cup in Arteta’s first season only to last a little more than 18 subsequent months.
Much of this plays to the levels of authority Arteta was afforded almost from the outset at Arsenal and indeed how levels of trust have only risen on the back of the improvement he has gradually brought in terms of the club’s culture and indeed its football. On Saturday in Budapest Arsenal will field a team that has its manager’s personality and standards written right through it. As Arsenal closed out their first Premier League title in two decades, Arteta was still making big calls, decisions that raised eyebrows even within his own dressing room.
Ben White and Leandro Trossard were pushed to the fore at right-back and left-sided attack. Injury ended White’s return to prominence but it was nevertheless real. In the centre of midfield, meanwhile, Martin Zubimendi – a £50m signing last summer – has suddenly found himself under pressure for his place from a 20-year-old left-back, Myles Lewis-Skelly. Dropping Aaron Ramsdale for Raya a few years ago was a big call but has more than paid off.
Arteta has a coach’s mind that doesn’t stop. It’s often looking for solutions to problems that have not yet shown themselves and that’s how it was with Raya three summers ago. It’s strange that he will not be Spain’s World Cup goalkeeper. National coach Luis de la Fuente prefers Unai Simon of Athletic Bilbao and indeed Barcelona’s Joan Garcia. The suspicion is that Raya suffers simply because he does not play in La Liga. De la Fuente is a European Championship winning coach and as such has probably earned the right to preside over such an oddity. In the Puskas Arena tonight, Raya has an opportunity to make a final claim before his country begins its World Cup campaign against Cape Verde in Atlanta. If Arsenal find a way past PSG to win the Champions League, Raya will in all likelihood find himself centre of attention once more.
