In the 51st minute last night, with the score at 0-0, Atalanta’s Mateo Retegui stepped up to take a penalty. In goal for Arsenal stood David Raya.
The double save that followed was the defining moment of the opening 2024-25 Champions League game for both sides and the main reason Arsenal left Bergamo with a point from a goalless draw.
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Unflustered and unfussy, Raya is no longer underappreciated
As Raya rose to his feet after the second stop, he let out a gigantic scream and was swarmed by his team-mates.
Here, The Athletic’s goalkeeping expert, who played the position professionally in the United States and Europe for over a decade and now coaches ’keepers for a club in the Swedish league, analyses those saves and looks at how Raya has developed the technique that allowed him to make them.
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It was not the first time this season Raya has made a save of this calibre.
Against Aston Villa on August 24, he pulled off a similar stop against Ollie Watkins, throwing his left hand in front of the ball, again when the score was 0-0.
Each save came with the game’s result hanging in the balance.
There is an element of luck with stops like these, but goalkeepers create their own luck. Being in the right place at the right time is a skill, and it’s not one every ’keeper possesses. The only way to do that is over weeks, months, and even years on the training pitch as they face hundreds of shots. If you fail to hold a high standard (perfection, basically), then when presented with the opportunity to make a difference in a match, you will be leaving it up to chance rather than skill. The phrase “You play like you practise” rings especially true for goalkeepers.
Strikers miss chances, midfielders miss passes and defenders miss tackles, but very few of those will have the instant, game-changing effects of a goalkeeping miscue. Perfection may not be realistic, but it’s the target.
During training, when outfield players are working on passing or tactical exercises, it is common to see the ’keepers off on the side doing agility drills as they repeatedly jump over cones and hurdles while manoeuvring around obstacles to make saves. The more examples and situations you work through, the more seamlessly they translate to the field of play.
We goalkeeping coaches plan sessions in meticulous detail, whether the focus is individual development, preparing for an opponent, or improving a specific aspect of the position, and ensuring realism is crucial. This video of Arsenal goalkeeping coach Inaki Cana and Raya from their time together at Brentford four years ago is a great example of these types of drills.
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Raya credits Arsenal goalkeeper coach Cana after Atalanta double-save
The familiarity and understanding have been built over years together and have been key to Raya’s development over the past year since his move from Brentford to Arsenal.
Pay attention closely around the 40-second mark. The actions Cana is putting Raya through look distinctly familiar to those he executed against both Villa and Atalanta.
Back to Bergamo. As we can see below, with the ball bouncing in the other direction after the initial penalty save, Raya has the awareness to turn his head after his dive, continuing to follow the trajectory of the ball.
Realising it is still in play, he turns his head while on the ground, catches sight of the ball bouncing to Retegui, and immediately jumps back to his feet. In a split second, he turns his body to face the ball again and takes off toward the back post. Had he hesitated for even a moment, Retegui would almost certainly have scored from the rebound.
Though this was a tense sequence, it did not appear that Raya was stressed. It is almost as if there was a sense of calmness about him amid the chaos. In the moment, you cannot consciously digest all that is happening — Raya only had milliseconds to react. This is when his instincts kick in, honed by all those hours on the training pitch. He reaches back behind the line of his body with his left hand and palms the second attempt on target away from goal at the last second before it crosses the goal line.
His footwork also played an important role. Quick feet are a stable foundation for every goalkeeper — it’s what gets you from A to B, and it’s important to get there as efficiently as possible.
What is so special about this play is how quickly and seamlessly he executes his crossover step into a bigger power step before launching himself toward the ball. He could instead have taken a quick side shuffle (or two) into a power step to make the save in this situation. Would that be wrong? No, but it wouldn’t be the most efficient option.
Raya needed to get from his right-hand post back to the middle of the goal as fast as possible and the crossover step was the fastest and most effective way to do that. A side shuffle would have taken him too long to cover the space.
In these next frames, you can see Raya mid-stride in the crossover step…
… before taking a bigger power step to launch himself toward the ball.
The quick crossover step into a power dive helped Raya cover more than half of the goal in the blink of an eye. Thanks to his footwork, he could get a big left hand behind the ball. Using the crossover step in favour of the side shuffle may seem like a simple adjustment, but it’s not one every goalkeeper would execute successfully.
We should also highlight the angle of Raya’s approach across his goal — without it, it’s unlikely he would make the second save. As he darted across, rather than throwing himself forward at the ball, he threw himself slightly backwards.
His decision to dive like that crucially gave him the angle to push the ball to safety. It sounds strange to say a goalkeeper should throw themselves backwards, but had Raya attacked the ball at any other angle, he may not have had the correct angle or timing to meet the ball with sufficient strength and power to make the save.
As quick as Raya was darting across the goal, his ability to turn and orientate himself at the final second, throwing his left hand backwards, was the icing on the cake.
Raya began to show his true ability towards the end of last season, but it took time before he consistently found his rhythm.
It’s understandable why he might have felt hesitant — moving to Arsenal was a big leap. The fans, loyal to incumbent No 1 Aaron Ramsdale, did not originally welcome him with open arms and he was training daily with the goalkeeper he soon replaced, who had not done much to warrant being benched in the first place.
Competing under such pressure, knowing someone is breathing down your neck and having your every move scrutinised, is not easy. Yes, Premier League footballers are paid well to handle it, but we should not forget the human element. Pressure has affected even the greatest players.
And as we can see below, using the expected goals on target (xGOT) metric, Raya has been in superb form this season. It is a small sample size but his saves are preventing roughly a goal every other game, compared to the statistically average goalkeeper.
Arsenal’s decision to part ways with Ramsdale this summer was best for everyone, especially Raya.
Removing the pressure of having Ramsdale waiting in the wings and having the full support of the club can work wonders for a goalkeeper’s mindset.
It is hardly surprising we are now seeing the best version of him.
(Top photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
