Hard as it may be to believe or to justify after the events in Leipzig, the logic was to . Manchester city jettisoning their decade-long policy for goalkeeper recruitment last summer and signing John Louis Donnarumma. When your biggest passion is defensively, how your possession restricts your opponents from the third pitch, then what you want from a No.1 is someone who can keep the ball and go forward. Ederson it is a dream. He was born big Claudius Bravo it is tolerable.
That changed everything Rodri’s A torn anterior cruciate ligament in September 2024. Suddenly Manchester City were able to shut down the opposition, to stop the counter and keep the other team from hitting and hoping. After allowing somewhere around seven and a half hits in each of the previous four seasons, City allowed 9.34 in 2024-25, 9.71 in 2025-26. Now Enzo Maresca has taken the pin and is locked up Elliot Anderson enough of the Mediterranean, we are in the Premier League 10.56 In the Champions League, where so many of City’s opponents know very well how to play on the first leg, 11 shots were allowed per game (that’s not as perverse an average per PSG game as you might think).
If you allow yourself to put a lot of extra pressure on your end, you want someone who can keep the ball. In the beginning, Gianluigi Donnarumma is that guy, certainly if he is the player who carried Paris Saint-Germain through so many moments and the first Champions League title. But it is not a course.
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In Leipzig tonight, the outfield players managed to cover their increasingly error-prone goalkeeper; Erling Haaland 13 goals in nine meetings with the Bundesliga side and a 3-2 win for City. Donnarumma was not a cover when this team admitted Nicholas Jackson’s shot through his gloves at Village Park, nor when through Doue demand and Vitinha in PSG’s heavy win at the Etihad.
Those mistakes were revealed by the 6ft 5in frame with the flexibility and burst of an 18-pounder. Donnarumma may still be 27-years-old, but his movements in recent months have betrayed every one of his 12 years as a first-team player, 553 game clocks and a lot of balls to burn those tires.
You can add the possibility that Antonio Nusa’s goal, Leipzig’s second equalizer, could have gone down in the category of Donnarumma’s shots sooner. It’s a 0.2 xG shooting spot, one of the Norwegians hitting pretty hard with its post-shot value of 0.65. In other words, Donnarumma would do well if he kept it. It is, however, the Manchester City goal-scorer who has been supplied to his archer over the break. Well you have to wait.
Especially since it’s so cataclysmically awkward for the first equalizer. Any goalkeeper’s primary job is to protect his goal. Flowing in three yards from the line with Riedle Baku in a passing position, Donnarumma was trying to take an easy exit. Again, a stopper shot that could make the ball go down faster. Surely the Italian could not much argue that he was unlucky; redis suggests that Baku saw the gap and struck more precisely.
Of course, Donnarumma has had his moments before, with the smartest concern aside from Christoph Baumgartner denying a long shot. The same must be said of this time and of the city and of its whole life. At his best, he recovered the sphere of his last months at PSG and across 56 games in the Premier League and the Champions League, he conceded six goals less than the post-shot xG value of the shots he faced. Last season in the Premier League he was one of the best strikers in the league; at this time there or thereabouts.
It was all Donnarumma a fine It was not worth the price. If you put up with a goalkeeper who can’t give you much in possession, it’s because he’s the best ball-keeping force in the world. It seems a long time since Donnarumma could claim that moniker.