Whatever the level of play, the goalkeeper matters. The whole team works for the result, sure, but when goals are counted against someone, it’s the keeper whose name goes in the table. So what is a clean sheet, and which goalkeepers are collecting the most of them right now?
A clean sheet means a team, and in the stats the goalkeeper, doesn’t concede a goal in a match. Looking at results you might think it happens all the time. It doesn’t, at least not for most keepers. Only the best ones have more matches without conceding than matches where they pick the ball out of the net.
There are several ways to bet on this. You can pick the opponent to score under 0.5 goals, or choose NO on the BTTS market, meaning at least one team doesn’t score. That’s clean sheet betting in a simple form. Either option needs some homework, and I’d say a look at the last few games is the minimum, not a bonus.
Detailed clean sheet statistics exist for practically every competition, so checking which goalkeepers keep the most clean sheets takes a couple of minutes. A small catch though: the number of goalkeeper clean sheets doesn’t really measure how well a keeper saves. Some of the best shot-stoppers play for weaker teams, and they face so many shots that a clean sheet is rare for them. Their save percentage can look great while the clean sheet column stays almost empty.
So which number should you trust? Both, honestly, and neither completely. I tend to start with the clean sheet percentage, meaning clean sheets divided by matches played, and then check the team’s defence in front of the keeper. A keeper behind a strong back line gets some of the credit he doesn’t fully deserve.
Ter Stegen is a good example of how this works. In the 2022/23 league season he kept 26 clean sheets in 38 matches, a clean sheet percentage of about 68%, which is a very high number. He played every game, and Barcelona’s defence was well organised, so I wouldn’t give all the credit to him alone. More on this in our La Liga statistics post.
Another case that surprised me back then was Lazio’s Ivan Provedel, in the Serie A table. His form earned him a call-up to the Italian national team. What stood out was that he had played for weaker clubs before, so he wasn’t a name everyone knew.
The two keepers above are only examples. Many goalkeepers across the top 10 leagues deserve a mention, and even those on weaker teams in the top 5 leagues sometimes pile up clean sheets. It happens, not often.
Lower down, in leagues closer to the second ten, you usually have to play for a top club to get a good defence in front of you. That’s why keepers like Odysseas Vlachodimos looked so good in Benfica’s goal. His goalkeeper stats from that period were impressive, but I’d still compare them with what he did elsewhere.
Journalists and fans argue about this endlessly. Besides most clean sheets, people look at save percentage and passing accuracy. The second one barely counted a few years ago, which is a bit strange now, since modern keepers are almost an extra defender. So who is the best? Nobody can say for sure. Here are a few names that always come up:
