An in-depth breakdown of Lucas Chevalier, Paris Saint-Germain’s new goalkeeper
In what was one of the shock moves of the summer, Lucas Chevalier is a Paris Saint-Germain player.
After Gianluigi Donnarumma’s Champions League campaign, everyone, including myself, thought he would be staying in Paris. However, Luis Enrique decided he wanted to move on from the Italian, who could be heading to England.
Chevalier is joining PSG from Lille on a deal of around 42 million that can reach up to 55 million with bonuses.
PSG has learned from previous mistakes in their handling of the goalkeeping situation, meaning Chevalier will be handed the #1 role right out of the gates and will get a chance to prove himself going into a World Cup year, where the starting position for Les Bleus could be his with a strong season.
I will break down both Chevalier’s strengths and weaknesses, also comparing him to Gianluigi Donnarumma so PSG fans can know what they are getting out of their new goalkeeper.
Strengths
Ball-Playing
I hesitate to start off this section by talking about this because it is the root of a major misconception about him. There is a notion going around on Twitter that PSG signed Chevalier because he is a passing-first keeper, which could not be further from the truth.
While keepers like Ederson or Mike Maignan have shown that you can be successful with a keeper who is a ball-player before a shot-stopper, that is not what Chevalier is.
It is true that PSG signed him partially because he is better on the ball than Donnarumma, but that does not mean it is the main reason at all.
PSG signed Chevalier because he is a phenomenal shot stopper (I will talk about that next), while also being good on the ball.
Since he arrived in Paris, teams have been able to beat PSG by making Donnarumma try to beat them with his feet. If you want an example of this, go back and watch the first leg against Barcelona in the Champions League quarterfinals in 2024.
In the Club World Cup, Bayern Munich and Chelsea found a crack in PSG’s system that concerned me immensely for the future. When PSG builds up from the keeper, Donnarumma would always play the ball short to Vitinha and let him facilitate.
Chelsea and Bayern would do everything they could to cut off Vitinha. This forced Donnarumma to play with his feet by himself, and he could not do it.
Luis Enrique utilising Vitinha in the way that he did caused them to be able to still succeed despite these issues for most of the season, but it fell apart late.
PSG was able to work around it against Bayern and still win, but it proved too much of an issue against Chelsea. They were barely able to get the ball out of their own half for much of the game, and they lost 3-0.
Chevalier is very different. He is often able to join the buildup and play as a third member of the backline, which can be instrumental for PSG in freeing up Nuno Mendes to make more runs.
Here is an example from an article by The New York Times in 2023 (there is a lack of comps on social media displaying his ball-playing, which is a shame because he has made some impressive passes), showing Chevalier moving up in between the two center backs and delivering a pass straight to Lille’s #9, Jonathan David.
This type of play is something Donnarumma was never capable of doing, and it would have required Vitinha to drop back in between the center backs.
This is what the buildup looked like for PSG last year (I realized after the fact that the positions of Neves and Ruiz should be swapped), with Donnarumma in goal, as you can see, Vitinha is the one in between the two center backs.
With Chevalier, who is able to distribute deep from outside of the box, the buildup can be something more like this.
This lets Nuno Mendes and Vitinha both get more space to work with, and it also prevents PSG from having a numbers disadvantage in the midfield.
I will close this section by saying I do not think Chevalier’s ballplaying is anything incredibly special. Above-average, yes, but elite, no.
I would say it is good, but I don’t know if I would go past that. However, compared to Donnarumma, he is a major upgrade.
Even if he cannot bomb the ball over the top like Mike Maignan, at the very least, he will free up Vitinha and prevent PSG from having to move the ball forward with a numbers disadvantage in the midfield.
Shot stopping
While I just spent time praising his ball playing, this is what Luis Campos and Luis Enrique are here for.
Before you go on with the rest of the article, here is a compilation of some of his best saves for your viewing pleasure.
Chevalier is absolutely phenomenal between the posts.
Across all competitions this year, he conceded 39 goals while facing 50.5 expected goals on target (xGoT). That is 11.5 goals prevented, which is an outstanding mark.
For reference, Donnarumma also conceded 39, but he did that while facing 37.07 xGoT, meaning he let in almost two goals more than expected. The Italian’s best season in Paris for shot-stopping was 2023/24, when he conceded 35 goals on 46.27 xGoT. His 11.27 expected goals prevented still does not beat Chevalier’s mark from this past season.
Chevalier does have a bit of an advantage in racking up expected goals prevented, as he faces more shots than Donnarumma does, but that is not going to be even close to the difference in the 13.43 expected goals prevented gap between the two.
A map of the shots on target that both Chevalier (red) and Donnarumma (blue) faced from FotMob is shown above, and you can see there are differences in where they excel. Donnarumma is able to get to more extreme shots, while Chevalier is more consistent with shots near him. That is not to say Chevalier is incapable of making incredible saves, as if you go watch the attached comp, you will see that is not the case. But with his height discrepancy (6’2 for Chevalier against 6’6 for Donnarumma), the Italian has a longer reach.
What a longer reach gives, it also takes away. For a shot right at the keeper near their legs, it is easier for a shorter keeper to get down and save it. If you want an example of this, the first one that comes to mind is Kingsley Coman’s goal against PSG in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 in 2023.
Chevalier’s reflexes are incredible, and while he is not particularly tall, he is still athletic and lanky enough to reach the top corners in one quick step. His height can cause issues in different areas of his game that I will discuss later, but not here.
While Donnarumma made many crucial saves for PSG, there was a lot of inconsistency in his play. With Chevalier, while he might not reach the heights that Donnarumma did (both literally and figuratively), he will be much more consistent.
Big game play
Lucas Chevalier is as proven on the biggest stage as any young keeper in the world.
The highlight of his season was this masterpiece against Real Madrid to get Lille a win in the Champions League’s league phase.
In that 1-0 victory over Los Blancos, he earned Man of the Match, made five crucial saves, keeping a clean sheet while facing 1.99 xGoT.
Between Dortmund, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, or a man of the match performance against Fenerbache in a crucial Champions League qualification game, Chevalier has always shown up in the biggest moments.
The only big team that he hasn’t been able to figure out is PSG, but thankfully for him, he will not have to worry about playing them now.
Chevalier’s 3.5 expected goals prevented in the Champions League ranked fourth among all keepers in the competition.
The only keepers ahead of him were Arsenal’s David Raya (5.9), Real Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois (5.6), and Bologna’s Lukasz Skorupski (3.6). Raya and Courtois’ clubs both also advanced further in the competition than Lille did, so they had more time to rack up that stat.
While there are plenty of things to be worried about when implementing a new, young keeper into the squad, Lucas Chevalier keeping his cool on big European nights is not one of them.
Weaknesses
Penalties
While Chevalier is an amazing player, he is not a perfect keeper.
The first issue, and the one where he has the biggest drop-off to Donnarumma, is his penalty saving.
In his entire career, he has only saved four of the twenty-six penalties that he has faced.
As we saw against Liverpool and in the 2021 Euros, Donnarumma is the first keeper you would choose in a penalty shootout.
While Chevalier is certainly a downgrade in terms of his penalty saving abilities, I do not think it is too big of an issue.
In their fifty-four years as a club, PSG has only participated in sixteen penalty shootouts. Most of those have come recently in the Coupe De France against teams who are putting their whole team behind the ball all game. Their shootout against Liverpool was their first ever in the Champions League.
Could losing Donnarumma hurt if PSG gets into a penalty shootout? Sure.
Should PSG make their decision on their keeper of the future based off a scenario that happens, on average, more than every three years? No.
Box command
This is a strange one.
When I mentioned earlier that Chevalier’s height harms him in areas other than shot-stopping, this is what I was talking about.
His command of crosses is simply not very good.
He only made 0.62 high claims/90 this season, which is well below average.
Luckily, Donnarumma is worse. Despite being four inches taller, he only averages 0.28 high claims/90. I have had my grievances about Donnarumma’s box presence in the past, but I think it generally improved in 2025.
There were still some games where it was bad (Arsenal league phase) but there was also a lot of good (Liverpool second leg).
With Donnarumma being described as inconsistent at best with commanding his box, PSG might not notice too much of a difference. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue for Chevalier.
This is very niche, but I also noticed another issue when I watched him: He is not comfortable at all dealing with cutbacks.
He has a bad tendency to stick too close to the near post when a winger is attacking from the goal line, and this leads to him too often allowing passes to the center of the box where it leads to a high xG shot.
He has the reflexes and shot-stopping ability to get back and make a save if someone does shoot near post, so I want to see him try to focus on stopping the pass to the center of the box, because those usually result in shots that can’t be saved.
Handling
Of all the issues I will talk about today, this is the most serious one.
Chevalier has a very bad tendency to either spill the ball on his saves or parry it right back to the attacker.
Sometimes his rapid reflexes are able to bail him out, as seen below.
Sometimes, they are not.
Even against PSG this season, he conceded a goal due to this exact reason.
In a game where the margins are razor-thin in the Champions League, parrying the ball away or parrying the ball back to an attacker can be the difference between going out and moving on.
Thankfully, I do not think this is an unfixable issue.
Donnarumma had this issue a bunch in previous years, but I noticed him doing it significantly less this season.
It might take time, but this is hopefully an issue that Chevalier is able to improve on in the future.
Final takeaways
I don’t think Lucas Chevalier is a perfect prospect, but he is a very good one.
Luis Enrique and Luis Campos both wanted him badly, and when they are in agreement they are almost always right.
He has been one of my favorite keepers in Europe this season. He carried Lille on his back through the Champions League, and watching him during the fantastic battle for the Ligue 1 European spots was amazing.
The confidence and style of play he has is so much fun to watch, and I cannot wait to see him in Rouge et Bleu for at least five years.
