Gianluigi Donnarumma was signed to be world's best shot-stopper, but at Manchester City, he's merely fine

Hard as it may be to believe or justify after events in Leipzig, there was a logic to Manchester City jettisoning their decade-long policy for goalkeeper recruitment last summer and signing Gianluigi Donnarumma. When your greatest defensive attribute is how your possession constricts your opponents from your third of the pitch then what you want from your No.1 is someone who can keep and progress the ball. Ederson is the dream. Even an aged Claudio Bravo is tolerable.

That all changed when Rodri's anterior cruciate ligament went in September 2024. Suddenly Manchester City were unable to shut down the opposition, to block off the counter and keep the other team to hitting and hoping. Having allowed somewhere around seven and a half shots in each of the previous four seasons, City allowed 9.34 in 2024-25, 9.71 in 2025-26. Now that Enzo Maresca has taken the helm and concluded that Elliot Anderson is enough of a midfield, we are at 10.56 in the Premier League. In the Champions League, where so many of City's opponents know best how to play on the front foot, it is 11 shots allowed per game (that average isn't as warped by playing PSG as you think).

If you're going to allow that much extra pressure on your goal, you want someone who can keep the ball out. In principle, Gianluigi Donnarumma is that guy, certainly if he is the player who carried Paris Saint-Germain through so many crucial moments and to their first Champions League title. But, of course, he isn't. 

In Leipzig tonight, the outfield players managed to cover for their increasingly error-prone goalkeeper, Erling Haaland scoring a 13th goal in nine meetings with the Bundesliga side and earning a 3-2 win for City. Covering for Donnarumma was not something this team were able to do when he let Nicolas Jackson's shot through his gloves at Villa Park, nor when he got done by Desire Doue and Vitinha in PSG's heavy win at the Etihad.

Those errors betrayed a 6ft 5in frame with the manoeuvrability and burst of an 18-wheeler. Donnarumma might still be just 27 years old but his movement in recent months betrays every one of his 12 years as a first-team player, 553 games on the clock and a lot of rubber burned off those tyres.

You could potentially add Antonio Nusa's goal, Leipzig's second equaliser, into the category of shots Donnarumma might have got down to quicker. It's a 0.2 xG shooting position, one that the Norwegian hit fiercely enough that its post-shot value was 0.65. In other words, Donnarumma would have been doing very well if he saved it. This is, however, Manchester City's goalkeeper, one recruited for his shot-stopping above all else. You're entitled to expect him to do very well.

Especially when he was so cataclysmically clumsy for the first equaliser. Any goalkeeper's primary job is to protect his goal. In drifting three yards off his line when Riedle Baku was in a crossing position, Donnarumma was trying to take the easy way out. Again, a shot-stopper who is quicker to get down to the ball might have dealt with it. Certainly the Italian couldn't argue much that he had been unlucky; replays would suggest Baku saw the gap and hit it precisely.

Ridle Baku sneaks one in at the near post past Donnarumma 😤

Stream the #UCL on @paramountplus 📺 pic.twitter.com/tgP6KwASuh

— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) November 4, 2026

Ridle Baku sneaks one in at the near post past Donnarumma 😤

Stream the #UCL on @paramountplus 📺 pic.twitter.com/tgP6KwASuh

Of course Donnarumma had had his moments earlier, a smart diving save denying Christoph Baumgartner's long-range strike. The same is true of this season and his City career as a whole. At his best, he has recovered that aura of his final months at PSG and across 56 games in the Premier League and Champions League, he has conceded six fewer goals than the post-shot xG value of the shots he has faced. In last season's Premier League he was one of the better pure shot-stoppers in the league; this time he is there or thereabouts.

As a whole, Donnarumma has been fine. It's just that he was not bought to be fine. If you're tolerating a goalkeeper who can't give you much at all in possession, it is because you want the best in the world at keeping the ball out. It seems like a long, long time since Donnarumma could lay claim to that moniker.

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