Brad Friedel has claimed that Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker is a better player than Manchester City’s Ederson.
The City star ended his sixth season with the Manchester club last month by lifting the Premier League trophy, the FA Cup and the Champions League.
Now having kicked off City’s pre-season tour of Asia, the 29-year-old, who joined the Blues back in 2017 for a fee of £35m, has found himself being compared with another one of the Premier League’s Brazilian shot-stoppers.
Friedel ranks Alisson above Ederson
Speaking on talkSPORT, Friedel had this to say about Alisson and Ederson.
He said: “Alisson for me is the best right now. Ederson is excellent also, he’s very, very close to him, but I like Alisson.
“What I like most about Alisson is when he does make mistakes, like all goalkeepers do, it just doesn’t faze him, he can walk straight back out on the pitch again and be very, very good.
“Ederson is probably the best at that, playing out of the back when you’re being pressed. He also has that 70, 80-yard pass with great accuracy, Alisson is obviously very good at that as well.”
The previous Premier League season saw Ederson save 46 of the 77 shots on target he faced, leaving him with a save percentage of 62.3%.
Compared to his fellow Brazilian, the Liverpool goalkeeper saved 105 of the 147 shots he had to deal with, resulting in him getting an overall save percentage of 72.1%.
However, in terms of long passing, the City star (62.9%) racked up a higher percentage of pass completion than Alisson (58.2%), which backs up why Friedel has highlight this part of Ederson’s game as being one of his strengths.
Despite perhaps not being as good of a shot-stopper as the Liverpool figure, Ederson showed his quality in that department during the Champions League final against Inter Milan where he kept a clean sheet and made five saves in total to help Pep Guardiola’s side be crowned as the best team in Europe.
With that in mind and the amount of trophies that the 29-year-old has helped City win since his arrival, it’s hard to see many supporters of the treble-winners being particularly fazed by Friedel’s assessment of the two Brazilian goalkeepers.
