Putting Alisson's Paris Heroics Into Context

Alisson Becker's shot stopping against Paris Saint-Germain was the best performance of his career. What else makes the Liverpool #1 so good?

The previous edition of this newsletter, published on Wednesday, looked into whether Liverpool have been lucky this season. On the same evening, at the Parc des Princes, the Reds proved that they have been by beating Paris Saint-Germain despite losing the expected goal count by 1.8 to 0.3.

Have Liverpool Been Lucky With When They've Faced Teams?

As much as the match fell into the ‘Twenty-Seven Shots Good, Two Shots Better’ camp, it wasn’t an outlandishly fortunate victory on xG difference alone. Per FBRef, there have been 17 wins with wider unjust margins in the last eight seasons of Champions League football alone.

lol

If karma can determine such things, note that PSG benefitted from the most unlikely win in that period while the Reds were on the wrong end of the second harshest loss. Maybe luck does even out in the end after all.

Not really, of course it doesn’t. What gives, are you new around here?

Besides, is it lucky to have the best goalkeeper in the world? Because Liverpool would not have won in Paris were it not for the performance of Alisson Becker. Not only did he record his best shot stopping performance from his 320 entries in the FBRef database, the Brazilian also collected the pre-assist for the only goal of the game.

Alisson’s best performances against expected goals on target (xGOT)

There must be thousands of games with advanced Opta data at FBRef. Only once in all of them has a goalkeeper saved more post-shot xG (a.k.a. xGOT) when also recording one of the two actions directly prior to a goal being scored. If you can name him without checking here, please collect your $1m prize from reception.

According to The Analyst, there have only been five instances of a higher xGOT total being repelled for a clean sheet in a Champions League knockout match since 2010/11. We really are talking about the best of the best of the best, sir. With honours.

That Becker was capable of such heroics is hardly a surprise. He’s been one of the best goalkeepers in the world for pushing towards a decade, maybe even the number one number one. Yet doubts were expressed among the Liverpool fanbase in recent months, suggestions whispered that perhaps the holy goalie is finally past his best.

A record of saving 0.1 post-shot xG more than expected in the Premier League since the start of last season suggests as much. Alisson Becker has been average for almost two years when he seems anything but. The Independent ranked his nine saves against PSG but we’re going to go deeper than that. It’s time to take a dive into the bottom corner of the goal that is Alisson’s data.