Fernando Muslera captaining Galatasaray- Image Credit: imdb
The Turkish Süper Lig is definitely not the titan of European football it once was. A nation of football fanatics, gone are the days of Gheoghe Hagi, Hakan Şükür, Tanju Çolak and so many others. A mix of financial mismanagement, false promises and unprecedented short-termism has created a barren landscape for the top division of Turkish football.
Fernando Muslera is one of few non-Turkish players who has stuck around for the accelerated decline of the Süper Lig, now captaining its most succesful club, Galatasaray, through one of the periods of its existence. A criminally underrated goalkeeper in his prime, potentially due to him remaining in Turkey for those years, Muslera can be seen as similar to Manuel Neuer in play style but without the imperiousness and even more of a proclivity to drop a clanger every now and then.
Don’t let this detract from his marvelous career though. To spend 15 consecutive years, in what are historically two of Europe’s toughest divisions, is no mean feat. If anyone was to doubt the quality of Turkish football’s top division when Muslera arrived there from Lazio in 2011, it would show a grave lack of historical knowledge of the European footballing landscape. While not the superpower it had been during the 1990s, or even the level of the 2000s, in the early 2010s the Süper Lig still retained a European presence, with Muslera helping Galatasaray qualify for the Champions League for four consecutive seasons, playing in groups that included Real Madrid, Juventus and Chelsea in that time, even making it to the last 16 in 2013/14.
Undroppable at international level since 2009, he played for La Celeste at multiple youth levels before inheriting the mantle of first team stopper from Fabián Carini. It was not necessarily a guarantee that he would play for the Oriental Republic, however. Having been born in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, and having Italian citizenship, he had options, although it does seem he chose with both his head and heart. Italy’s goalkeeping situation had been a closed shop for 12 years with the presence of Gigi Buffon and Argentina had their own young prospective goalkeeper in Sergio Romero. With Uruguay, Muslera was almost a nailed-on starter for the 2-time World Cup winners before he had even made his debut. So, it made sense to play for the country he had grown up in and played for at youth level.
A litany of domestic titles does not a great player make. Bad players can play for good teams and win titles, after all, Costel Pantilimon has a Premier League winners medal. So Muslera plays for the best team in Turkey and wins some trophies, it’s almost expected, to do it playing a minimum of 30 games a season in 10 out of 11 seasons with over 70% save percentage in each season (according to FBref.com) tells a different story though. A pillar of consistency, domestically at least, due to the league he competes in it is easy for some football fans in most western European nations to forget that Muslera has been such a strong competitor in Turkey. Fans in Italy, particularly Rome, will be well aware of the Uruguayan’s exploits, since he played over 100 games for the blue side of the Eternal City. I Biancocelesti rotated the 6ft 3in stopper with the Argentine Juan Pablo Carrizo, for 2 seasons, before Muslera became one of the first names on the team sheet subsequently prompting Gala to pay around €7million (according to Transfermarkt) and Lorik Cana for his services.
A core part of the Uruguay squad that made it to the semi-finals at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa (saving two penalties in the controversial quarter-final against Ghana), Muslera has been the nation’s starting goalkeeper at every tournament since his debut in 2009. While still prone to the odd error at international level also, it cannot be denied that Muslera has probably been his nation’s most consistent ‘keeper ever and has helped to solidify the granite-like defence of the physical Uruguayans. Along with former Atlético de Madrid stalwart Diego Godín, current Levante defender/midfielder Martín Cáceres and former captain Diego Lugano, Uruguay have had over a decade of defensive solidity that looks likely to carry on through Giménez (Atlético Madrid) and Araújo (Barcelona).
However, while the back line looks to have been future-proofed and the attack through Núñez (Benfica), the goalkeeping situation does not look to have as obvious a replacement. The youngest goalkeeper on the Uruguayan radar looks to be Unión’s Santiago Mele (on loan from Plaza Colonia) at 24 years old. This is still VERY young for a goalkeeper, not everyone can be Aaron Ramsdale or Illan Meslier, being established starters so young. 29-year-old Sergio Rochet has won 4 international caps at the time of writing and could stake his claim for the number 1 shirt. Captaining Nacional, Rochet is a more traditional style of goalkeeper than Muslera, his passing ability for instance is nothing compared to the current first choice. This then presents an issue, who will replace the Gala captain on the international stage. While 35 years-old is not old by goalkeeper standards, it does mean that someone needs to be ready when the time does come. While he doesn’t seem to be a ‘keeper of irreplaceable quality, this kind of moniker being reserved for the likes of Neuer and Buffon, this may become the case if a younger model is not found and bedded in.
A former Süper Lig goalkeeper of the year and Turkish Footballer of the year, part of the Lazio squad that broke a 5-year trophy drought and the Galatasaray squad that won their first league title since the 07/08 season in his first with the club. Whenever he decides to retire, the stopper will probably remembered in the same vein as the likes of Hagi, Luisão or Jan Heintze, players who have terrific success in a particular league but are often forgotten to the wider audience of football fans, due to the overwhelming coverage of a select few leagues.
It also didn’t help Muslera that he has been playing in an era of so many magnificent goalkeepers to overshadow him. Neuer and Buffon I’ve already mentioned but the likes of Casillas, Ter Stegen, De Gea, Courtois, Alisson, Ederson, Navas just to name a few, have caused the Uruguayan to become a bit of an afterthought in the annals of the great contemporary shot stoppers. This does a disservice to the former Nacional man, who may not have revolutionised the position, like Neuer’s sweeper keeper trend that ‘swept’ across the footballing world (see what I did there?) but he has certainly been a mainstay in the conversation of top-quality goalkeepers in European football.
To succeed in the bubbling cauldron of bile and acid that is Turkish football is not an achievement to be sniffed at either. With three dominant clubs in the region, the Buenos Aires born stopper chose to move to a nation addicted to the global game, it is easy to crumble in that pressure cooker of an environment. However, the Uruguayan, who has captained his nation too, has managed to thrive in the environment and has eventually become a symbol of the club.
It makes sense that the man who started his career at Montevideo Wanderers, in a nation also addicted to football, has brought his own nation’s passion for the game with him. Matching the intensity that the Turkish have for the sport can only have helped Italian citizen to ingratiate himself into the madness that is involved with anything to do with the Turkish Football Federation (TFF). This 2021/22 season will appear as a blemish on his record, however. A disappointing campaign for all of the ‘Big Three’ in Turkey, anything less than a title is disappointment for all three, Gala have certainly had the worst of them.
Sitting in the bottom half of the table at the time of writing, the club is accurately described as being in the midst of a crisis. The strategy of signing old stars, at the end of their careers, on big contracts is one that never seems to work well for more than 4 or 5 seasons. To have done it for the last decade, as Galatasaray and the whole Süper Lig have done, is just tempting fate. Ryan Babel, Patrick van Aanholt, Bafetmbi Gomis, Soufiane Feghouli and many more arrived at the club as already aging players and have continued to age the squad further.
With all of this mismanagement around him, both by the club and the league, it is a wonder that the stopper has retained quality and consistency for as long as he has and may well continue to do so.
By Owen Coyne
Taken to the Corner 