Ayoooooooo! Welcome back to another week of your very favorite blogging content! I hope that the gist of this season has been understood and you’ve already been implementing your own strategy of identifying the players within your team (and within your shortlist) who are the perfect fit for the type of system that you’re looking to orchestrate. 🤞
In today’s episode, we take a look at a Costa Rican Shot Stopper who, for the last few years, has been treated as if he’s well beyond his prime, as if there’s not dozens of Keepers within the professional game at the moment who would do anything to even obtain a glimpse of his prime… It truly saddens us to see how much people have forgotten how fantastic of a keeper Keylor Navas actually is. He’s a bonified legend for both his country and for his former club Real Madrid, and is currently adding some Hispanic spices in order to keep that bench warm at the moment since he is no longer considered a ‘First team regular’ (🤦♂️) . A player that only stands at 6 ft (which is short for goal keeping standards), there isn’t a lot of GK’s who are of the same height and have been able to produce such incredible bouts of success compared to the Costa Rican… Not only is he an exceptional GK based on his height, but his mentality (which we’ll be getting into in a bit) has been a major benefactor for every single team that he’s played for and is one of the main catalyst behind him being a 3x Champions League winning Keeper (in addition to what he actually does in between the sticks).
But yeah, I think we’ve done him enough service in terms of rinsing him with such praise… Onwards to his attributes!
SM24 ATTRIBUTES
We normally tend to associate Hispanic or Latin players with having the best technical capabilities with the ball at their feet, and although Keylor is okay in terms of what he will provide outside of goal keeping, he is a throwback in terms of what he does when it comes to keeping the ball out of his net. Let’s see what other items within his attributes are spot on or needs to be changed…
TECHNICAL ATTRIBUTES
Like we’ve just mentioned, Keylor isn’t giving you Ederson level of performances when he gets unto the ball, but what he really excels at is his unique (and I mean VERYYYYY unique) shot stopping style, so much so that he is considered one of the masters when it comes to making “big game saves”. His Command of Area is something that is underrated since this guy has the cajónes to tell his teammates where they should be at all times (particularly in pressure situations); You don’t become a big game shot stopper without being good in One on Ones, so we had to make an increase in that area of Keylor’s game; As we mentioned in Christopher Nkunku’s episode, we’re not sleeping on the importance of the Positioning attribute, and for a player who is below the average height for a GK playing at the highest level, Keylor uses his keeping intelligence to ensure that his angles to where the ball is during open and dead ball situations are on point, and we had no other choice but to increase this aspect of his game. Now, in terms of the world class individual technical attibutes that Keylor possesses, it brings us a lot of joy to see that he is in the elite territory for his Shot Stopping and his brilliant capability of Saving Penalties. You did him good on those two, I.S! 🤘
WHAT WE THINK
PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES
Now, for everything that we just mentioned, we cannot take away from the fact that Keylor is indeed a pretty short lad (well, in the strange world of Goalkeepers…), so his physical attributes are a good representation of the type of player that he currently is in real life. Some might say that a ’79’ of Aerial Ability is a bit harsh, but the lad is only 6 ft, so we think it’s a pretty good estimation…
Speaking of “What we think”:
WHAT WE THINK
MENTAL ATTRIBUTES
Keylor is a 🤬 leader!!!!! This man was instrumental to Real Madrid doing the Champions League 3 peat between 2016-2018 (in addition to Ramos, Bale, Ronaldo, Modrić, and Casemiro, ofcourse…). For as good of a team that this Madrid team was, their tactical set up throughout these three finals was that of being a defensive approach which meant that the leaders had to really step up to the pressure, and it’s safe to say that Keylor definitely played his part with the level of brilliant performances he had during these matches (especially the 2nd final against Juventus in Cardiff). This is exactly why his Leadership is at the impressive ’99’, and although other senior players within SM24 have been given an ‘100’ for Leadership, it’s safe to say that Keylor has “100%” earned his ’99’.
In the third final against Liverpool in Kiev, Madrid had to deal with a lot of time off the ball. In order to do deal with that level of pressure for such an extended period of time, it is imperative that the players within the Madrid XI have high levels of Concentration due to going long spells without the ball, and this is exactly why we’re quite disappointed with Keylor’s Concentration rating since it is WAYYYYY too low for the quality of player we have at our disposal. In addition, it should’ve been a mandatory rating of ’80’ or more seeing that Keylor is both a GK (who are used to spending lots of time without the ball), and a player who has vast amounts of expereince.
WHAT WE THINK
Would love to see this bloke in the MLS some time in the future! 🤩 ✌️
The Soccermanager Experience 