It is 15 months since David de Gea last played a game of competitive football.
The Spaniard was happy to wait for the proper opportunity, not unreasonable in believing that Europe’s elite clubs would be interested in his accomplishments and status, but offers did not materialize. Just one week before Fiorentina’s Serie A season kicks off, he inked a contract with them on Friday.
The last time De Gea kicked a ball was at Manchester United’s FA Cup final loss to Manchester City in May 2023. De Gea turns 34 in November. He has not even engaged in consistent team training over that time.
Fiorentina is taking a significant gamble by signing De Gea, despite the fact that he may have won the Premier League Golden Glove in his last season at United for maintaining the most clean sheets. In most professional sports, fifteen months is a long time, but in football it seems like an eternity.
David De Gea with the 2022-23 Golden Glove (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
The question now is: what challenges will he face after such a lengthy absence from the game?
De Gea has basically been on vacation for the previous 18 months, but there is a big difference between being injured and that. One of the most difficult challenges following an injury is having to rebuild your body and put in a lot of effort into strength training in order to strengthen your muscles and bones—which will have weakened from your time away from the game—even before you can return to the field. You will not be able to go back to the pitch to practice the technical and tactical aspect that are crucial for any goalie until you have completed that.
De Gea has managed to stay comparatively fit, though. He has combined playing padel, one of his favorite pastimes, for several hours each week with three to four sessions of physical and goalkeeper-specific training. It is plausible that he has not lost too much technical proficiency if his training has been as successful and efficient as it has been described to be, especially considering that goalkeepers typically train alone.
David de Gea will quickly be able to get back to speed technically (Paul Kane/Getty Images)
After spending so much time away from the game, the largest technical adjustment and the most difficult thing for him to duplicate in individual training is performing everything quickly and under pressure, just as he would have in a professional setting.
De Gea’s handle, reflexes, and footwork have improved, which is one of the reasons United was willing to let him go in the first place, but these are not the areas I would be most worried about after missing so much time. If you play at the highest level, handling, reflexes, and footwork are fundamentals that you will pick up rather fast.
His decision-making and positioning are more concerning. Regardless of the situation, these are the hardest things to repeat in training and require time to perfect following a prolonged stay on the sidelines. Game time is the only way to regain comfort with these talents.
The largest challenge I faced in 2012 was getting these two components of my game back after missing half a year due to injury. My game management hampered since I was often a step slow or out of position. Specifically, I found it difficult to read through balls and crosses. Maybe I would start to approach a ball, realize I miscalculated where it would end up, and then retreat at the last minute. Although it did not always result in mistakes, my lack of decisiveness undermined the unity that goalkeepers require with their defense and created doubt among the other players on the team.
You can practice these elements of your game all you want, but being able to do it in the heat of battle, when the pressure is on and errors must be made with greater accuracy and smaller tolerances for error than in training, is a whole other ballgame.
The game’s cerebral component comes next. The top goalkeepers do not have too much trouble maintaining their mental health when they play and practice often. But after a long absence, the emotional fluctuations become more pronounced. One moment you could feel like the greatest person alive, and the next you could be paralyzed by uncertainties.
David de Gea experienced many highs and lows at Manchester United (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
I did get an adrenaline rush and was able to ride that high at first since I was so grateful and happy to be able to play again following my return. But as the honeymoon ended and the grind of the daily grind set in, I had to come down to earth. I started to feel rusty and became frustrated.
I started talking to myself negatively instead of positively. “Am I ever going to get past this next hurdle or is this problem going to linger around?” is what I would tell myself. In my darkest hours, I genuinely believed that I would never be able to return to my pre-injury shape.
A player has increased pressure, tension, and uncertainty as a result of all of these elements, which unavoidably impacts the remainder of his performance. When you distribute the ball, you become tense, which makes your kicks inaccurate and subpar. You go up gently into a challenge and drop balls you should have caught because you are afraid you will be smacked when coming for a cross.
It is not enjoyable. Being confident is crucial to your success as a goalie. The instant you begin to believe that you are average like Clark Kent, you actually are! If you feel like Superman, you will be Superman!
Even the finest goalkeepers can become overwhelmed by the amount of rigorous scrutiny they face, and although De Gea has a better mental ability than most, playing for United for almost ten years is not easy. One of his biggest accomplishments was living as long as he did.
Hopefully, taking a break from the game has given him the opportunity to reflect and heal psychologically from the unrelenting pressure and criticism he has faced over the last ten or so years. He might even benefit from it as he attempts to get back on track at Fiorentina.
There will likely be a transitional period, but distribution will once again be the main focus. When he had the opportunity, De Gea was frequently at ease—occasionally even superb—when playing the ball out from the back. He would falter when teams put pressure on him and his time was limited. Given his extended absence from the game and the fact that high-pressure settings and continuous game time are necessary to reproduce these kinds of scenarios, it is reasonable to infer that this aspect of his game has not improved.
De Gea is hoping that when he enters a position, a club that seeks to reduce danger with the ball at his feet would try to make things as easy as possible for him.
It just so happens that Atletico Madrid, the team that handed him his professional debut at the age of 17, is one of the teams that does this exceptionally well. Jan Oblak, their goalie, is pretty ordinary when it comes to the ball at his feet and shares a lot of stylistic similarities with David De Gea. Diego Simeone, the manager of Atletico, has done a good job of tailoring his system to suit his goalie.
Jan Oblak also struggles with the ball at his feet (David Ramos/Getty Images)
He is primarily expected to be the primary pivot at the back and send shorter and easier passes wide to his center-backs or up the middle to his midfielders, rather than being expected to successfully spray the ball at various distances over the pitch. Because of this, Atletico has been able to maintain its “modern” style while relieving the goalie of nearly all of the strain.
Before his unplanned break, De Gea was already approaching the end of his playing days. The emphasis elite teams place on goalkeepers who are strong in possession and who can sweep and control their box means that even if he is able to regain his shot-stopping ability, which remained crucial during his final season at United, it will not have gone in his favor.
He still possesses a lot of admirable traits, and it will be fascinating to watch how he does in Italy.
(Top photo: Albert Perez/Getty Images)
