The Barcelona goalkeeper is in fine form this season
Marc-Andre ter Stegen is in a sweet moment of football. He is posting numbers that place him back among the best goalkeepers in the world. Barça needed him in form and his reliability this season is bearing fruit on the team’s results.
Against Athletic Club, he kept another clean sheet. An Athletic side that have scored 21 goals against him in 21 games, his third-worst rival after Bayern Munich (30 goals in 13 games) and Real Madrid (24 in 17). He didn’t have much work at Camp Nou on Sunday, but he didn’t have to pick the ball out of the back of the net, either.
Ter Stegen’s start to the season is worthy of credit. In fact, he’s made history in LaLiga by becoming the first goalkeeper in the competition to keep nine clean sheets in the first 11 games of the season. Unheard of. He has only conceded in two games: against Real Sociedad (1-4, Isak scoring) and real Madrid (3-1, goals from Benzema, Valverde and Rodrygo).
Between the Real Sociedad and the Madrid games, he went on a run of 636 minutes without conceding. It’s a run that moved him into the top 10 best runs in LaLiga and was the second best ever for a Barça goalkeeper, after the 755 minutes of Claudio Bravo in 2014-15