The arrival of Mike Maignan last summer was greeted with some skepticism given the level of the outgoing Gianluigi Donnarumma, but he quickly became one of the fan favourites.
MilanNews report how Milan have a real champion between the posts and he is not only a fantastic goalkeeper in terms of conventional qualities, but he is also essentially an extra outfield player because of how good he is in distributing and playing the ball.
Normally a match is played with 10 players outfield plus the goalkeeper, however the qualities of Maignan and the mechanisms of Stefano Pioli have Milan truly playing with 11 men while in possession.
When the opponents come high to press the two centre-backs or the midfielder who drops deeper to create (usually Tonali), the players know they have an extra avenue if needed when protecting the ball and moving it around.
The statistics provided by Lega Serie A show that Maignan has conceded just 8 goals in 2022, with 15 clean sheets in 29 Serie A matches overall, therefore more than 50% of the matches with a clean sheet.
In recent games he almost always has a big hand in the result with his saves such as the one on Vojvoda against Torino, the header from Cabral against Fiorentina and others. Pioli’s team are leading the table with three games to go, and it is in big part down to the former Lille man.
