Alisson Becker: Why He’s One of the Best in the World

(Yashin Trophy ranking aside)

Written before the Liverpool-Brentford game on 12/11/2023

There was a feeling of disdain when the final ranking of the Yashin Trophy 2023 was published. Alisson Becker, who has been one of the very best goalkeepers in England and the World, was not even in the top 10 of that list, let alone in the top three, or actually winning it.

It's not like Alisson is someone new around the block who had one good season. He was excellent at AS Roma before joining Liverpool five years ago. I have never seen him having an average season at Anfield thus far. 

The Brazilian makes goalkeeping look easy on the eye, something you can associate all legendary keepers with. When you are making the art of elite shot-stopping straightforward for the mere mortals, it means you are doing a good job of it in the first place.

The 31-year-old is probably the best in the world at reading where the shot will go and make the movement towards saving it a milli-second earlier than most in that position.

Let’s take a statistical tour to analyse Alisson’s performance in a Liverpool shirt and why he deserves more respect from the footballing world. 

Before talking about this season, we take a view of last season, where the Brazilian was the best keeper in the league. The team underperformed and the final position in the table could have been worse had the keeper not been on top of his game.

Alisson Becker - 2022/23 Season

This section has some of the data visuals analysing the player’s performance last season.

Post-shot Expected Goals minus Goals Allowed (PSxG +/-) is probably one of the top metrics to analyse a goalkeeper’s shot-stopping ability. Ofcourse, there are caveats behind, but it more or less evens out when we are looking at a large chunk of games.