The best goalkeeper in the U-20 world back in 2019 languishes, apparently, three years later at Real Madrid. Andriy Lunin played in Alcoy his second official match as a madridista in the only place he knows as a white goalkeeper, El Collao, because his other match was also there, also in the Cup, last season. A loop that does not remove Lunin from his condition as an everlasting substitute for Courtois and the Ukrainian is not guaranteed to play the entire Cup by an Ancelotti who remarked the problems of the Ukrainian in the game with the feet: “It has had errors, it can be improved.”
Lunin is still an interesting project (Madrid paid € 8.5M for it) but it is almost a total unknown in Spanish football. Few know him closely, one of them is Joseba Ituarte, the goalkeeper coach at Leganés in 2018-19 when Lunin landed there on loan as soon as he signed for Madrid. Those first days speak a lot about what the Ukrainian is like. “He appeared when he was only 19 years old, greeting us in Spanish, he insisted that we speak to him in our language and after three months he already spoke it and understood almost everything,” Ituarte explained to AS. A will that came clothed with a Stakhanovistic work ethic. “His mentality was Soviet, of not stopping working and repeating the exercises as many times as necessary. Shortly after arriving they asked me about his level and I said he was a goalkeeper for the Champions team “.
“He arrived with a Soviet mentality and in three months he already spoke Spanish, psychologically he is very strong”
Joseba Ituarte, his goalkeeping coach at Leganés
Ituarte reminds him of good games as a cucumber (“One at Wanda and another against Rayo, where he saved a penalty”) and he continues to project a future, but if it is under sticks and with real fire. “A goalkeeper does not do with training, he learns with the games, and although Lunin is right now in the hands of Luis Llopis, a goalkeeper guru, needs to have more continuity, in Madrid or wherever … ”.
His situation worries in Ukraine
Madrid are comfortable with Lunin, but his lack of minutes is restless in Ukraine. “People here follow his situation with interest and are waiting for his debut in the League, but in general they are worried that he will not play practically anything,” he explains to this newspaper Iryna Koziupa, journalist for the Ukrainian daily Grandstand. But the lights of having a compatriot in Chamartín do not blind the Ukrainian coach, who is losing patience. “Petrakov believes that Lunin was wrong to sign for Madrid and that puts you in a difficult situation if you summon a goalkeeper who has barely played in the last two years, he can’t go on like this, he has to play ”. It’s up to Lunin to make a decision.