Ederson was Pep Guardiola’s most important Man City transfer ever

Change can be difficult to see in real time; sometimes it’s only clear how much things have shifted with the benefit of hindsight. We are about to see that phenomenon play out in real time with Ederson.

In time, his influence on the Premier League (and on football in general) might become better understood, but now he departs as one of the most under-appreciated components to Manchester City’s success.

In short, Ederson not only changed what was possible for Guardiola and for City, but he changed how the position of goalkeeper is viewed in the Premier League. When he arrived at the club in 2017, City were fresh off a season strewn with errors-leading-to-goals from both Claudio Bravo and Willy Caballero and the spotlight was firmly on the position as Guardiola took the ire from both neutrals and fans.

Less than a decade ago, there was nothing wrong with having a goalkeeper who just made saves and cleared the danger whenever the ball was at their feet. Now, that is a problem for any team that is serious about playing any sort of possession build-up from deep.

Guardiola’s principles are fairly simple: Overloads win matches. If you can find a way to outnumber your opposition then you can control that space and can control the ball. That, in turn, leads to opportunities to create chances, and opportunities to score. It’s why he often does funky things with his full-backs or the way a centre-back has pushed forward into the middle when City are in possession. There’s always an extra pass and there’s always an extra player to get around pressure.

With Ederson, City effectively had 11 outfield players. Except one of them was allowed to wear a green kit, put on a pair of gloves and pick up the ball from time to time as well.

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To reduce Ederson down to only his footwork does him a disservice as a goalkeeper, but it’s the part of his game that altered the landscape for how the sport is viewed after his eight seasons in England so it’s where a lot of the focus will end up being and it’s where analysis of his City career probably has to start. Without him being able to receive the ball under pressure and not only make the right pass, but make a good pass while under that pressure, City aren’t able to achieve what they have achieved under Guardiola.

(Well… Perhaps they are, but it certainly doesn’t look how it’s looked for the last eight years and Guardiola would have had to have found another way to do it. That’s what makes the Gianluigi Donnarumma signing an interesting one because things will have to look different now.)

READ: Gianluigi Donnarumma flaws mean Man Utd makes more sense than Man City

There are many goalkeepers who can pass the ball and who have the mentality to accept opposition pressure in 2025. There were a lot fewer of them in 2017, before Ederson joined the club, and in the years since City themselves have tried – and failed – to find others who can do it like him. Some have come close, but there has always been an obvious deficiency in the way the team tries to build up when there’s been an Ederson deputy in goal.

It’s the smallest of small details, too. Things like the shape, timing and weight of the pass that he makes compared to how, say, Stefan Ortega (who is probably the closest City have come to having an Ederson-lite second goalkeeper) does it. It’s not that what Ortega does is bad, of course, but that’s the problem with setting the standard so impossibly high.

Even when on his own goal-line and with an opposing forward closing in at a rate of knots, Ederson is able to choose the correct option and deliver a pass that is perfectly positioned for his teammate to receive to step past the press. This isn’t simply accepting pressure and successfully moving the ball on; it’s doing it in the best way possible to make the next part of the build-up easy for your colleagues.

Under that pressure, Ederson was just as capable of rolling it five yards to a centre-back, drilling it 15 yards to a full-back, chipping it 30 yards to a midfielder, or hammering it 80 yards to a striker. With each of those passes, it was more than just finding the target, too. It was doing it in a way that made the next pass simple.

Think about the decision Guardiola made to replace Joe Hart when he first arrived at Eastlands and the disdain with which that choice was met. Hart was clearly a superb goalkeeper and had been the solid foundation on which City’s 2010-2016 success had been built. But his skills lay firmly in the handling arena, while Guardiola wanted (or needed) a player who could affect the build-up in much more intricate ways.

It became such a weapon in City’s armoury that teams would choose not to press the goalkeeper because there was literally no point. It would lead to situations where Ederson had the ball at his feet and every outfield player was man-marked…so he would just wait, edging forward, for someone either to break ranks and close him down, or for the piece of movement from a teammate that would open up a pass.

If that pass was over the top into space, then he could make that, too. His kick — dubbed affectionately by Guardiola when he came up against Ederson for Benfica while at Bayern Munich as “the kick” – is unique. Many goalkeepers have had the ability to pick a pass down the whole length of the field, but nobody delivers that pass as flat as Ederson does.

Any Premier League centre-back worth their money will be happy for a goalkeeper to boot it long. The ball rises high into the air and there is plenty of time for them to read the flight, get underneath it, and compete with the centre-forward to meet it to head it away. But when the ball stays low and is driven in such a way that it will land on the forward’s chest or foot (or in space ahead of them to run onto), there is neither the time nor the shape on the delivery to get into a position to clear it. He is the Premier League’s record-holder for the most goalkeeper assists for a reason.

On top of this, for all the criticism he received for his shot-stopping, he was far from a problem in that regard. While it’s true there are other goalkeepers who could be better relied upon to make crucial saves at crucial moments, the insinuation that Ederson did only the basics is a huge slight on his ability and performances for City.

Towards the end of his time at the club, it got to the point where any goal he conceded was branded one he ‘should have done better with’, especially in a 2024/25 season where there was a bin-fire of calamities around him. The manner in which City play means that opposition chances are generally high-value (the theory being there shouldn’t be many of them), so a City goalkeeper already has a harder task that most when it comes to save-making. Add in a season where injuries, fatigue and form are combining to increase both the frequency and the quality of chances City concede and the goalkeeper is starting at a much bigger disadvantage than normal.

It’s easy to point at the Champions League final in 2023 as the high point of Ederson’s City career – his saves were indeed crucial in the club lifting the trophy in a match where they weren’t the better team – but it was also a match that showcased the command of his area. With just over a minute of added time left and with City winning 1-0, Inter played a free kick into the box and the goalkeeper raced off his line to claim the cross a good 16-yards from his goal. For all the saves he made in the game, it was that moment that relieved the bulk of the pressure.

His departure will mark a change in they way City operate, especially in possession from deep. It will be interesting to see what the new version of Guardiola’s team looks like – but it’s certain that it will never be the same as it’s been over the last eight years. Ederson has changed what it means to be a goalkeeper in modern football. Nobody does it like him and whatever comes next will simply have to be different.

To make everything at City work under Guardiola, Ederson was the most important signing the club made.

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