Gianluigi Donnarumma dominant, Marcin Bułka unbeatable: Why the goals are drying up in Ligue 1 | OneFootball

Ligue 1 has had noticeably fewer goals this season than in previous years. It was the spark for a serious debate earlier in the season when the France under-21s manager Thierry Henry criticised the league, “It isn’t even necessarily the lack of goals. There’s no action, no shots on target.”

There has been the question of teething problems with the league dropping down to eighteen teams this year from the previous twenty. Something that the Montpellier HSC owner had alluded to in 2021, “If we go down to 18 teams, I am scared that we’ll be watching sh*t matches, because everyone will play with the fear of relegation. It will be a war every Sunday.”

Or the fact that RC Lens last season showed exactly how close a team could come to toppling Paris Saint-Germain if they operated with a defensive first approach. Their 28 goals conceded all season almost allowing them to win their first title since the 1990s. However, while these points all look likely, there is another reason that’s hiding in plain sight.

The Renaissance of the Goalkeepers

In Ligue 1 there has been a goalkeeping renaissance. The quality on offer between the posts has been exceptional this season and created games often resolved by the slightest margin of error. A facet of the game that OGC Nice look to have run with this season.

Marcin Bułka (24) marshalled his Nice defence into an almost impenetrable wall throughout the early parts of the season. The goalkeeper went 78 days without conceding a single goal while keeping ten clean sheets throughout their first thirteen fixtures. It was a level of performance that allowed fans to briefly believe that Nice could pull off the impossible and dream of winning the league.

On Friday night, there was another glowing example of the quality keepers on offer, as AS Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain played out an entertaining but scoreless draw. Gianluigi Donnarumma (25) in particular was in inspired form to keep Monaco constantly wondering how they hadn’t found the net. It was a rare moment in the limelight for a goalkeeper who has been frequently criticised this season for his apparent inability to fit into the Luis Enrique system.

It is no secret that his manager appreciates a goalkeeper with exceptional footwork, and Donnarumma has never particularly excelled at that aspect of the game. His skills have always been in his immense ability as a shot-stopper, and against Monaco, the full depth of his talent was called into question and he easily rose to the occasion.

Goalkeeping talent found across Ligue 1

This is a theory that looks to be backed by the data, according to information gathered from Wyscout when measuring goalkeeper performances against xGOT from across the top five European leagues.

xGOT as a model builds on xG (which values where a shot is taken from) by looking at where a shot ends up in the goal mouth. Effectively, it values shots placed into the corners higher than straight down the middle where they’re more likely to be saved. By looking at goals conceded vs xGOT you can begin to evaluate how well a goalkeeper has performed against the shots they’ve faced.

What this then shows is that Ligue 1 goalkeepers have performed exceptionally well at preventing goals this season. The data shows that half of the top ten best-performing goalkeepers against xGOT play in Ligue 1, which brings to light some of the struggles that forwards have had trying to score goals in France this season.

The goals have certainly been drying up this season in France, but in a way, this should not be a cause for concern but heralded as a moment in the limelight for a position that often is only noticed when something has gone terribly wrong.

GFFN | Nick Hartland