“Tonda, thank you. You like a king!
From their separation message to Antonin Kinsky, Slavia Prague obviously hopes that the 21 years will be a long way off.
“You are a goalkeeper, child!”
Tottenham Hotspur will hope so. They completed a €16million (£13.3m; $16.5m) deal for Kinsky on Sunday morning, signing competition for Guglielmo Vicario and one of the most highly-rated young goalkeepers in world football.
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“It reminds me of Manuel Neuer,” Athletics tells A Bundesliga team that, like all the resources of this article, has received anonymity to shield relationships. “His taste has some differences, but he is larger in What is presence and transmits the feeling of not being afraid. »»
Kinsky’s most tangible quality is his two-footed distribution and his ease on the ball is another tempting Neuer parallel. But he has an accomplished all-round game and is equipped with excellent reflexes, strong reach and the kind of thick-bodied, 6ft 3in (190.5cm) frame so coveted in the modern position. Goalkeeping is in his blood, too.
Michael Pastva is the editor in chief of Ruik. cz, a sport in the Czech Republic.
“Antonin comes from a circle of goalkeepers,” he says. “His father also called Antonin, a goalkeeper of the national team, so he had a wonderful future. “
His father remains a big influence. He was coached by him at his first club, Tempo Prague, and then later during his time in the Czech Republic Under-19 side. Tonda, as Antonin junior is known, moved to Dukla Prague in 2018, made his professional debut in 2020, and then joined Slavia Prague in 2021.
But, said Pastva, turned out to be an attractive bifurcation along the way. Having spent two consecutive seasons on loan, the Czech team of Moment Point Vyskov and the longest speech, Kinsky had become accustomed to playing and with his contract due to the expiration in the summer of 2025, reluctant to spend time in the substitutes of Slavia Prague ‘Ban.
“The most attractive thing is that I probably wouldn’t have played at all for the Slavs,” Pastva said.
“In the summer of 2024, he made it transparent in the media that sought to go to the end of his loan to Pardubice to play regularly. However, the No. 1 of the club, Jindrich Stanek, then injured in Europe the championship and Slavia agreed with Kinsky to terminate her contract.
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“If that hadn’t happened, I would have gone to Slovan Liberc, where I wouldn’t have been so visible. “
It is a time of sliding doors. Kinsky has become Slavia’s first-choice goalkeeper, then set a new club record while holding 12 blank sheets in 19 games. He and Slavia only conceded seven goals in those 19 games and at the time of their transfer, they were transparent of seven problems in the most sensible of the Czech first league.
“During those six months,” said Pastva, “has become one of the most productive Czech goalkeepers. Lately he is safeguarding Matej Kovar de Leverkusen (for the national team), but if he plays in Tottenham, we can be waiting to become A No. 1 “.
Karel Tvaroh is a former professional player turned broadcaster for Canal+. In the Czech Republic, there is “massive hope” for Kinsky, he tells The Athletic.
“It’s partly because of his character. In a way, he doesn’t seem to be a Czech person,” Tvaroh says. “He has huge confidence, but not arrogance. That’s not something we usually have in ourselves and that helps him to stand out a lot.
“I talked about him with many old guards and expect him to be a genuine challenger for Vicar. It seems to have a specific weakness. “
In the short term, with Vicario still recovering from surgery, Kinsky might well find himself instantly installed as first choice. It will be a big challenge. Moving from Czech football to the Premier League will be taxing in its own way. Kinsky is equipped for that, Tvaroh says.
“It looks a bit like Petr Cech, since it is very oriented to the objectives. It has an intelligent filter, which is helping in this global social networks. This allows you to not pay attention to this noise and concentrate on your work.
“But I think his greatest strength is how he can influence the team. It can be quite abstract, but I think the goalkeeper can have an aura. Kinsky Calman’s backup copies to his teammates because it turns out that there is no way that can admit.
Tottenham’s interest was long-term. They had scouts from Deutsche Bank Park when Slavia played opposite Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League in November. They would have also noticed a correct performance by Kinsky.
In the first half, he did a wonderful prevention of an Omar Marmoush education remotely. In the second, as shown in the screenshot below, he denied Hugo Ekitike with a face-to-face prevention, with a vertical strategy typical of his style.
Negotiations for Kinsky began just after Christmas Day and signalling was pushed through Johan Lange, Tottenham’s technical director. President Daniel Levy participated in the final stages of the talks. With Fraser Forster out of contract in the summer, the club had intended to signal a new goalkeeper, however, Vicario’s injury in November accelerated their plans. In a data-driven process, Kinsky has become their number one focus.
It is simple to see why. According to the knowledge provided through OPTA, since July 2023, when Kinsky made his first appearance in the Premier Czech League (for Pardubice), he has made the maximum catches of any goalkeeper (48) and chose to attack only nine times. It has the joint savings rate of any goalkeeper to make more than five appearances (80. 3%) and has the precision of the second pass (73. 4%) of any goalkeeper to play 10 or more games. Of those passes, 50%was played for a long time.
Filip Novak is soccer data analyst. Although the positioning and distribution of Kinsky naturally cause attention, there are other layers that recommend that it adapts well to Tottenham.
“Stylistically, he plays high up the pitch and is heavily involved in his team’s build-up and frequently comes for crosses,” Novak says. “His average position of touches in the Czech top tier is the furthest up the pitch this season. Given Tottenham’s high line requires a goalkeeper who can function in that capacity, he’ll be effective. But it is his shot-stopping that truly stands out.”
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“In each of his last three seasons, he has been ranked in the 96th+ percentile among the league’s goalkeepers in the post-shot xG-based model (expected goals) evaluating shots both from inside and outside the box. Even for the world’s best players, it is very unusual to post such dominant performances for three consecutive seasons.
“It is even more remarkable when you had 21 years or more youthful in the seasons and it is not quite unusual for young players to be inconsistent. This was not the case for him.
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Even at this early level of his career, Kinsky has delighted through the game for groups at other ends of the table, in contrasting circumstances.
“Defensively, Slavia is the top dominant team in the Czech League. Imagine dominance at the point of the arsenal in terms of expected targets (XGs) he admitted, meaning they allow for very little damaging chance. But if they admit to a damaging attempt, Kinsky is a goalkeeper who makes saves to continue. At Tottenham, it will be another scenario for him. Given the diversity of injuries to their defensive players, they will face shots in the central areas.
“But it is not new for him. Pardubice, where he played the season before his time in Slavia, escaped by little descent that year and faced the highest shooting volume at the moment in the division. At the time of Vyskov, it is his First season in Senior football as a normal headline: they granted only 20 non -penalty objectives from more than 29 xg after the shot.
“Throughout his senior career, he has consistently posted highly above-average results in the claims proficiency metric. In the current season, he’s ranked the best in the Czech league, successfully catching roughly three out of four crosses. That’s useful because of how difficult Tottenham have found it to defend set pieces.”
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The sets would be a domain of interest for any goalkeeper in England for the first time. This is true for who joins Tottenham, whose difficulties with the corners were so pronounced.
Kinsky will bring a different approach. His positioning tends to be aggressive at set pieces. As the images below from a Europa League game against Ajax show, his starting position tends to be closer to the edge of his six-yard box than his goal line. When the corner is taken, he then makes a judgement on whether to come further out or to otherwise retreat to his line and react to whatever happens next.
A review of the corners Slavia Prague have conceded this season shows they rarely employ men on the posts, nor do opponents often try to restrict Kinsky’s movement by surrounding him with attacking players. That, of course, was a common situation faced by Vicario before his injury.
Interestingly, when it happens in Kinsky, the Slavs proved to be intelligently answered. Photographs in show an opposite game to Dukla Prague in October. In response, a pair of defenders pull the two attackers in, moving them hard to create freedom and space for a much less difficult grip.
It is moderate to wait for adaptations to English football. There are significant differences between the types of adjustment portions with which Tottenham and those Kinsky face like a Slavia player, but his attack and his tendency to catch him.
So is the environment.
From inside Slavia Prague, many accounts of Kinsky convey the traits of a typical early, high achiever: a player who will do more than he needs to before and after training and who wants to be challenged hard by his coaches in sessions.
The sources to which athletics has spoken with the club also describes its opening to cognitive training, and more avant -garde means to expand the fundamental skills of the goalkeeper, such as consciousness and reaction speed. It is the portrait, really, of a moved player. Kinsky knows his own brain and needs to be the goalkeeper who can be, and be as temporarily possible.
Tottenham will want him to be in a position almost immediately.
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