Antonín Kinsky produced his best Tottenham performance in the draw with Leeds on Monday night, staking his claim to keep hold of the number one jersey.
If there was going to be a hero in Tottenham’s survival quest, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone suggesting it could be Antonín Kinsky.
And it’s not as if there are many obvious other candidates. Micky van de Ven is a leader and a potential match-winner at both ends of the pitch, but he hasn’t been at his best in a long time. Richarlison is their top scorer, but he is about as unreliable as number nines come, both in terms of his goal supply and availability. There is a huge amount of hope pinned on James Maddison, who made his return to action on Monday night, but realistically, he will need time to get back up to speed after nine months out. Most of Tottenham’s best players are out injured.
One of those players is first-choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, who underwent hernia surgery in March. Spurs timed his operation to take place at the beginning of the international break to reduce the number of games he would miss; the hope at the time was that he would only miss one.
In truth, it was more than just hope at the time. Kinsky was Spurs’ second-choice goalkeeper, but he was nowhere near Vicario. There was no chance of Kinsky challenging for the number one spot, and everyone would have been desperate to get Vicario back after that one single match.
That was because Kinsky’s Spurs career had been rather mixed up to that point. He made a promising start following his £12.5 million move from Slavia Prague in January 2025, arriving when Spurs were desperately missing Vicario, who was out with an ankle injury. A 37-year-old Fraser Forster had played 10 games in a row and looked completely ill-equipped to play Ange Postecoglou’s possession game. So, when Kinsky made his debut against Liverpool in the EFL Cup semi-final, he wowed fans with his confidence with the ball at his feet.
However, the next week, he was beaten too easily by a Leandro Trossard shot in a painful north London derby defeat at the Emirates. Shortly after, he misjudged a low cross in a 2-1 home loss to soon-to-be relegated Leicester City. In his final game before Vicario’s return, he let Morgan Rogers’ very saveable shot through his grasp as Spurs crashed out of the FA Cup at Aston Villa.
That was to be his final appearance in a meaningful game last season. He did play in two Premier League games as Spurs prepared for the Europa League final, but they had long given up on their domestic campaign, and he has barely been involved at all this season. He faced Doncaster in the League Cup in September, and when he got a chance against top-tier opposition in the next round against Newcastle, he squandered it, weakly attempting to punch a cross clear and beaten to it by Nick Woltemade. Those were Kinsky’s only two appearances in Spurs’ first 42 competitive games of the season.
All of that made it astonishing that stand-in manager Igor Tudor threw Kinsky into his starting lineup for the away first leg of Spurs’ Champions League round-of-16 tie against Atlético Madrid. You’ll likely need no reminding of how dire it was, but just in case you do: Kinsky conceded three goals, two of which were his fault, and was hauled off after just 17 minutes.
If it already seemed unlikely that Kinsky had a future at Spurs, it then seemed impossible. Vicario came on, steadied the ship somewhat (though he also conceded two goals) and he was back in the starting lineup for each of the next three games. Then came his surgery.
And so, Kinsky was thrust back into the team. He hadn’t earned his chance; he got it because Vicario wasn’t able to play, and after the embarrassment of Madrid, there was natural trepidation about his return to action.
But it has turned out to be a huge – albeit surprise – success.
Kinsky is incredibly capable with the ball at his feet, and in that sense, he is more suited to Roberto De Zerbi’s football than Vicario. He can play off either foot, and the fact his defenders can trust him on the ball breeds confidence further forward and allows the team to play out from the back in a way they sometimes struggle to with Vicario.
The concerns, however, rested on his confidence, which would have been understandably low after Atlético, and his unreliable shot-stopping.
There has been no need for any worries, though, with Kinsky transformed under De Zerbi into a more than adequate Premier League goalkeeper. On Monday night against Leeds, he was Tottenham’s hero.
The team’s performance in drawing 1-1 was a hell of a reality check, when they desperately needed to win to put some breathing space between themselves and the relegation zone. Going forward, Spurs lacked ideas, cohesion and quality, and they couldn’t kill the game off after going a goal up early in the second half through Mathys Tel. For that goal, they again relied on a set-piece, this one their 17th from a corner in the Premier League this season, meaning they – along with Arsenal – have broken the record for goals from corners in a Premier League season.
Spurs have been too reliant on dead balls all season, with league-highs for proportion of their goals (39.1%) and xG (36.1%) coming from set-pieces. They have also been absolutely dreadful at home all season, winning just two of their 18 league games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and none since early December.
With no fit and available attacking alternatives to their front three of Tel, Richarlison and Randal Kolo Muani, and inspiration lacking, Spurs needed others to step up. Kinsky proved the man for the big moment.
Leeds looked the far likelier team to find a winner, and they very, very nearly found it when Sean Longstaff raced through in the eighth minute of second-half stoppage time and powered an effort towards the top corner from point-blank range. Unbelievably, Kinsky threw out his right hand and tipped the ball onto the crossbar and away to safety.
That individual moment saved Spurs. It preserved the point that took them two clear of West Ham in the relegation zone. But even before considering the colossal ramifications, that save was also one of the best made by any goalkeeper in the Premier League this season.
It followed another in the first half from a Joe Rodon header, low down to his left, right on the goalline, which any goalkeeper would have been proud of, but the quality of his stop from Longstaff meant that first save was quickly forgotten.
Kinsky was beaten on the night, but only via an expertly converted Dominic Calvert-Lewin penalty. The other shots on target he faced were worth 1.61 expected goals on target (xGOT) which, in simple terms, means that in normal circumstances, those shots would have resulted in 1.6 goals (or, more simply, either one or two goals).
In other words, Kinsky’s saves alone denied Leeds between one and two more goals. According to our xGOT model, only 14 goalkeepers have prevented more goals in a Premier League game this season than Kinsky did against Leeds, and half of them either conceded at least two goals or lost the match. Kinsky’s heroics, meanwhile, earned his team a point.
Beyond his eye-catching saves, there was a composure in possession that Spurs desperately need at the moment. They need to improve with the ball across the pitch, and Kinsky is providing a strong base to build from.
The performance was in keeping with his form in the last few weeks, too, in which time there have been a few other noteworthy saves, not least low down at the feet of Brian Brobbey in the defeat at Sunderland and from João Gomes’ free-kick right at the end of the 1-0 win at Wolves. He has also shown good command of his penalty area with a few particularly impressive high claims and punches when under pressure, including one in the 93rd minute against Brighton, when Spurs were still 2-1 up and clinging on.
Ahead of the Leeds game, De Zerbi insisted that Vicario will remain his number one. “Vicario is still the first [choice] goalkeeper [at] Tottenham,” he said. “Because what Vicario showed this season is enough to consider him a top player for us.”
But after Kinsky’s showing on Monday night, there is good reason to consider the Czech worthy of an extended stint in goal, at least for the rest of the season. His case is strengthened, too, by Vicario’s wildly disappointing numbers, the Italian ranking bottom of the entire Premier League this season for goals prevented (-5.5), having conceded 50 goals (excluding own goals) from 44.5 xGOT.
Vicario isn’t solely to blame for those numbers, of course. Nobody at Tottenham can claim to have had a good season, and he hasn’t been given enough protection, while Kinsky has been able to play in a much more positive environment.
But Vicario has also underwhelmed, and his numbers suggest that in the one area he is supposed to stand out from Kinsky, he has failed dramatically.
After missing out on the opportunity to go four points clear of West Ham, Spurs need at least one and quite possibly two positive results in their final two games, away to Chelsea next Tuesday and at home to Everton on the final day of the season.
They need every little bit of help they can get from each member of the team. On current viewing, it appears that, quite unbelievably, Kinsky could be the man to give them that little bit more between the sticks.
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