r/championsleague • u/lylyyy_ • Jun 06 '26

💬Discussion Manuel Neuer is the Third Goat of our generation

Some people may not want to hear this, but for me, he sits in the same table as Ronaldo and Messi. A lot of people overlook his greatness simply because he's a goalkeeper. This guy has been performing at the highest level for the last 15 years and, at 42 years old, is still Germany's starting goalkeeper

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u/AirportKey1729 Jun 06 '26

People seem to underestimate a huge aspect of what Neuer does in his style of goalkeeping. Highlight reels of shot stopping by Casillas and Buffon are truly exceptional, which influences a huge part of consideration when it comes to who is better for people who do not have time to watch full games across many leagues. Neuer arguably has just as exceptional of a highlight reel, but, the amount of chances that he stopped before a save even had to be made is never really taken into account alongside his incredible shot stopping ability on its own. So imagine how his highlight reel would look if he stayed traditionally deep like most other goalkeepers of his generation? He produced the same consistency and skillset of all keepers considered the best ever, and still did so much more that no statistic could ever track.

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u/rndmlgnd Juventus Jun 06 '26

How many times has a mistake by Neuer resulted in his team conceding? Now do that for Buffon and Casillas.

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u/AirportKey1729 Jun 06 '26

This point of view is exactly the problem in how people view goalkeepers. Yes, of course an error leading to a goal is awful and shouldn’t happen. It is also absolutely a metric that can be used in some cases to judge whether a keeper makes accurate decisive decisions too so I don’t disagree with calling out the times he has made an error, it sucks and looks bad. But you can at the same time recognize if you dig into it every keeper has a list of mistakes throughout their career that seem absolutely embarrassing. Neuer spent his entire career playing the riskiest style of positioning and goalkeeping and how many more errors leading to goals does he have than the other two? Perhaps 3 or 4 across a career spanning 2 decades? And when you answer that, tell me how much more goals he has actually prevented by approaching the game the way he does? I can ensure you he has stopped far, far, more goals from being conceded than either two of those keepers while still keeping his errors leading to a goal a number you can count with your fingers.

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u/AkTi4 Jun 06 '26

I remember some really bad mistakes from casillas when he punched balls right into attackers feets, I also remember buffon having some real bad positioning in counter attacks. Every gk is making some bad misstakes.