Who should be the starting goalkeeper for Real Madrid? Despite the fact that Carlo Ancelotti has seemingly made up his mind, the question continues to crop up as the season unfolds.
Diego Lopez has been given the reigns in the Spanish League while the historic keeper Iker Casillas has been relegated to mop duties as well as a few starts in the Copa del Rey and Champions League.
After five months, why are we still talking about this?
The conversation recently started up again for a number of reasons. Casillas recently confirmed that he had no intentions of leaving the club and planned to fight for his spot. However, he also broke his own record for most time without conceding a goal. This indicates that the keeper is certainly in top form and many are asking why he has not been given a chance.
Real Madrid News, an unofficial website dedicated to the team, recently released an infographic that compares the two keepers. Lopez has played 10 more games and has played in more than double the minutes that Casillas has; he has made 56 saves to Casillas 29.
But that is as far as Lopez goes in terms of winning the competition. The remaining stats on the graph show that Casillas has only conceded four goals in his 11 matches; two of those came in one game against Juventus. In fact, three of the goals conceded have come against the Italian contingent. The other goal conceded was against Galatasaray. But things get a bit more interesting when the statistics are weighed. Casillas has only allowed an average .36 goals per game while Lopez has allowed close to an average of a goal per game (.95 to be exact).
But the real kicker is the clean sheets on the year. Casillas has pitched eight shutouts (and has not conceded a goal since Nov. 27, a span of seven games) while Lopez has only kept seven clean sheets all season.
Another interesting thing to note is that Lopez has allowed 22 goals on 78 shots while Casillas has only conceded four goals on 33 shots; that is a 71 save percentage for Lopez and an 88 save percentage for Casillas.
Casillas has faced bottom tier competition in the Copa del Rey but that has been countered by more competitive matches in the UCL. It can also be argued that Casillas would likely regress to similar statistics (or maybe even worse statistics) if he were to get more minutes.
We may never know unless the netminder gets his chance. But as of now, it seems that Lopez will remain the main man at Madrid.
Who should be the starter for Los Blancos?
- Contribute to this Story:
- Send us a tip
- Send us a photo or video
- Suggest a correction
