Inter, Onana among ducks, disqualification and two difficult years

“Miaaaaaa !!!”. Onana. Also read as an exclamation: O Nana. And she didn’t take it, no. Alla Forrest Gump: Onana is who the duck makes. The future Inter goalkeeper is specializing, he is earning a Masters in Ducks, let’s put it this way. The last one last night, the night of the Champions League at the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam. The Unfortunate Onana missed the timing of the exit, Darwin Nunez scored, Ajax left the tournament, Benfica thanked, Samir Handanovic got up from the sofa at home, cracked his fingers and cracked his hands. thought that he is not so old then. From the football manual, chapter dedicated to the exit of the goalkeeper. It is written that the exit gesture breaks down in the approach, imbalance and grip phase. Onana messed all three of them. It is also recommended that the catch phase must take place with the arms extended, directed and aligned towards the ball, to avoid contact with the opponent. Eh, believe us. When at school they explained the exit, Onana was absent without excuse. Or who knows: he was looking out the window at the landscape.

Of some goalkeepers it is said: but where did he want to end up? Here, Onana, in fact. Perhaps she is atoning for some guilt, or perhaps she is the victim of a macumba. He must have thought of that when he was lying on the ground after Nunez’s goal: his face sunk in the grass, his arms still stretched forward, catching an unlikely ball that wasn’t there, no it wasn’t there anymore. . The fact is that since he bought him from Inter, André Onana hasn’t guessed half of them anymore. Zero parameter, of course. The satisfactions are also zero, however. The repertoire of his latest ducks – as he said – raises a question spontaneously: is this really the case? Who knows if Marotta and Ausilio asked themselves the question. Five-year contract, three million per season. Medical examinations already done. All ok, sure. In January, in the Africa Cup: Cameroon-Burkina Faso. Another wrong exit – completely punctured the intervention on a cross – another goal taken and the way still offends him. Gross error by André “Mani di Frolla” Onana, we are at the ABC of the good goalkeeper’s manual. He will repeat – in that Africa Cup of Nations – in the final for 3rd place, again against Burkina Faso. An own goal, this time. Very awkward, Fantozziano. Error then remedied with a penalty saved, but the sauce stain on the shirt remains. And on social media in these hours Onana is ending up like Loris Karius, who has now become a meme since that unfortunate night of the Champions League – (Paraphrasing Venditti: “Night of tears and prayers / Being a goalkeeper will never be my job”) – in which he did harakiri and Liverpool lost to Real Madrid.

Maybe he is too sure of himself, maybe he is too little. The boy born in Nkol Ngok, enrolled as a child in the Samuel Eto’o Academy, at the age of fourteen already in the Barcelona youth academy (it was Eto’o himself who reported it, but then the young André was disqualified from FIFA because the membership of the Blaugrana club had been irregular), then Ajax from 2016 to today, has been slippery for two years with some stumbles and not only on the pitch. Last February he was disqualified for one year by Uefa, because he tested positive for furosemide, a medicine prescribed to his wife Melanie. No one makes an easy irony that furosemide is a diuretic, used for the treatment of edema and water retention. However: UEFA recognized that it was a bona fide mistake (André thought it was an aspirin), but decided to punish him equally (in June, however, the disqualification was reduced to nine months). Onana takes it up and leads to ca ‘: he has been mulling over the diuretic poured out for months, he consoled himself by playing with his two-year-old son, then in November he returned to the Ajax squad list. And it immediately looked a bit rusty, actually. Meanwhile, Stekelenburg, Pasveer and even Gorter passed him. He returned to the Eredivisie at the end of February. Maluccio in the debut: Ajax defeat against Go Ahead Eagles, two goals on the rump. He is not better in the other two games, even if won by the Lancers. Two goals conceded against RKC Waalwijk and as many against SC Cambuur. Result: In the Eredivisie Onana averages two goals conceded per game.

The old coaches judge a goalkeeper for how much he knows how to “save the parable”. At that point the most is done, the rest is the prerogative of the greats (who also occasionally run into some mistake: the history of football is full of sensational ducks). Then one goes to see and discovers that in 2022, between the Eredivisie, the Dutch Cup, the Champions League and the African Cup, the good André played 12 games and managed not to concede a goal only on two occasions. Against AZ Alkmaar in the KNVB Beker (Dutch Cup) and against Gambia, Africa Cup quarter-finals. For the rest, he conceded goals from everyone. It wasn’t always his fault, but they were almost never unstoppable goals. Parable the parable, he always comes back there. Yet the body is bestial, the instinct that of the jaguar, the glance of the predestined, the feline reflexes. Yet for a couple of years he has been told as one of the best goalkeepers of his generation. Yet the boy has broad shoulders. He is still young, he will do it. But we know that goalkeepers are like that. They stay alone for the whole game, pierced by a thousand thoughts and it turns out that they then make an omelette. Onana is twenty-five years old and has a curriculum that was previously prestigious but today seems creaky. It is a bet. A coin tossed in the air. After all, even the goalkeeper who abandons his own goal and decides to go out to grab and / or reject the ball makes a bet with the force of gravity and the dynamics that regulate a body that moves in space. Usually it suits him. If his name is André Onana, he has been going a little less well for some time now.