Growing up, I swore Petr Cech was the best goalkeeper in the world. I think at that time, most people were on the Iker Casillas and Gianluigi Buffon trains. And for good reason. They were the faces of the two most prestigious clubs in the world, at least at that time, in Real Madrid and Juventus, and they were also the faces of the Spanish and Italian national teams.
Call it a flavor of bias, but I was in love with those old Czech teams with Pavel Nedved and Tomas Rosicky in midfield, Jan Koller and Milan Baros up top, and then Cech in goal. It was unfortunate, too, that the Czechs were basically chronic underperformers and Cech had a couple of bad blunders in a national team kit, but as someone who prided themselves on watching every single game instead of falling for narratives, I always kept telling people that Cech was the best in terms of his positioning, reflexes, and winning games, especially for Chelsea.
Back then, I was a young kid and we didn’t have access to the analytics we do today. So now when I look back on the actual raw data of Cech’s peak years at Chelsea when Jose Mourinho was getting them to set all kinds of defensive records, I can feel both vindicated and almost like I undersold just how brilliant Cech’s Premier League record was.
Petr Cech was an incredible success from the moment he joined Chelsea
Cech no doubt benefited from having great defenders like John Terry, the insanely underrated Ricardo Carvalho (I should probably do an article just about him one day), Paulo Ferreira, Asier Del Horno, and William Gallas and Ashley Cole around him. And Claude Makelele was like having another defender, too. But those guys benefited from Cech just as much.
Save percentage isn’t necessarily the end all be all, but it’s probably the best of the basic statistics we have of measuring goalkeepers. And Cech’s save percentage numbers at Chelsea are the best we have ever seen in any league since they started being reliable tracked.
Petr Cech won the Premier League in his very first season for Chelsea in 2004/05 as a 22 year old coming over from Ligue 1’s Rennes, starting 35 games for Chelsea. And while Cech was an amazing young keeper for Rennes, a real phenom and a hell of a find by Chelsea on the market, he skyrocketed as a Premier League rookie, going from a save percentage of 77.9 to 87.3 in his first season with the Blues. And he allowed just 0.37 goals per 90 minutes and 13 in the season. His goals per 90 average in his first season was the best of his career as the Blues allowed only 15 goals in the 2004/05 season – a defensive record that has still stood the test of time. And again, Cech did this when he was just a U23 goalkeeper.
That season would go on to start a streak of five straight seasons with a save percentage above 80 and three straight seasons with a percentage above 85. His best save percentage season came in 2006/07 when he stopped 91.3 percent of the shots he faced with a clean sheet in 13 of his 20 starts. But as well know, his season was cut short to 20 because of a skull fracture in October 2006 after a disgusting kick that could have killed him.
How Petr Cech’s peak compares to the modern GOATs
Cech would bounce back from that to continue being the pinnacle of excellence in the Premier League for Chelsea until 2015, winning two more Premier League titles with the Blues before flipping to rivals Arsenal, where he was still a top keeper with save percentages above 75. But his best years were obviously at Chelsea, where he had that insane five year peak. And in his 11 seasons with Chelsea, his save percentage never dipped below 72.
The best way to make sense of just how insane Cech’s run was is to compare his save percentages in those five seasons with the five year peaks of Iker Casillas, Gianluigi Buffon, Thibaut Courtois, and Manuel Neuer, as these four are widely regarded as the best goalkeepers of the modern era.
Let’s start with Casillas. He burst onto the scene as a homegrown player out of necessity with his heroics in winning the Champions League for Real Madrid over Bayer Leverkusen. His peak started in 2004/05 with a save percentage of 84.5, but in his career, he only reached a save percentage of 80 three times and only had two such seasons with a five year peak, fizzling out pretty dramatically by the end of the 2000s and beginning of the 2010s when Jose Mourinho arrived. And looking back, Mourinho was right to have divested from Casillas.
Gianluigi Buffon had two peaks, when he was a young phenom at Parma and Juventus and then later in his career to start the run of nine straight Scudetti for the Bianconeri. But his second peak was the best. Aging like a fine wine, Buffon had a save percentage of 83.5 in the 2011/12 and in that five season stretch, he had. three seasons above 80. But he never even hit 85 once, whereas Cech hit 85 three seasons in a row.
Manuel Neuer actually just falls short by the numbers
Now to Neuer. He had three seasons with a save percentage of 80 to start his career at Schalke, and then he repeated the trick with even better numbers at Bayern Munich. From the 2013/14 to 2016/17 seasons, Neuer had four straight campaign above 80 percent before a devastating metatarsal fracture broke up the streak in 2017/18. And while he was still great, when you look at the numbers, he was actually never the same again, never reaching a save percentage of 80 since that injury. That streak of four straight was impressive, but not only did Cech do five in a row even with his own brutal injury, but he also hit 85 percent in three seasons – Neuer never had a save percentage that high.
And finally, we end with Neuer’s successor at Chelsea Thibaut Courtois, who eventually became an even better goalkeeper and the consensus No. 1 in the world at Real Madrid. Tibo has never had a save percentage of 80 in a single season in his career. Think about that. The player everyone views as the best goalkeeper in the world never had a statistical season in which he could touch the other four, who are viewed as all timers.
I think when you break down the numbers of these great goalkeepers, especially the three with GOAT arguments (Neuer, Casillas, and Buffon), you see pretty clearly that Cech should be in the GOAT conversation, too. His peak is so mind boggling that it remains untouched, and while you can argue that his save percentage is propped up by the fact that Chelsea’s brand of defensive football under Jose Mourinho did not yield much in the form of high quality chances on goal, you could also argue that Bayern Munich and especially Juventus were equally defensively dominant in those comparative Buffon and Neuer peaks we looked at. I think Cech deserves even more appreciation for the career he had, and it shouldn’t be just Chelsea fans singing his praises as an all timer. I think that five year peak of his from 2004 to 2009 is the best of any modern goalkeeper.
Purveyor of footy since the 90s. Favor the Premier League and old school Serie A with a touch of Bundesliga. More than a touch. Professional writer for 20 years, covering every sport but now focused on the Premier League and world football. You won’t be able to guess my favorite team.