Антонин Кински
Добавлено: 06 янв 2025, 12:00 rusiakos
Антонин Кински
“Tonda, thank you. You leave like a king!”
By their parting message to Antonin Kinsky, Slavia Prague clearly expect the 21-year-old to go a long way.
“You’re a great goalkeeper, kid!”
Tottenham Hotspur will hope so. They completed a €16m (£13.3m; $16.5m) deal for Kinsky on Sunday morning, signing competition for Guglielmo Vicario and one of the most highly-rated young goalkeepers in world football.
“He reminds me of Manuel Neuer,” a scout for a Bundesliga team — who, like all sources in this article, have been granted anonymity to protect relationships — tells The Athletic. “His style has some differences, but he seems bigger than he really is. He has presence and gives off a sense of not being afraid.”
Kinsky’s most tangible quality is his two-footed distribution and his ease on the ball is another tempting Neuer parallel. But he has an accomplished all-round game and is equipped with excellent reflexes, strong reach and the kind of thick-bodied, 6ft 3in (190.5cm) frame so coveted in the modern position. Goalkeeping is in his blood, too.
Michael Pastva is the editor-in-chief of Ruik.cz, a sports website in the Czech Republic.
“Antonin comes from a goalkeeping family,” he says. “His father — also called Antonin — was a national team goalkeeper, so he had a great future.”
His father remains a big influence. He was coached by him at his first club, Tempo Prague, and then later during his time in the Czech Republic Under-19 side. Tonda, as Antonin junior is known, moved to Dukla Prague in 2018, made his professional debut in 2020, and then joined Slavia Prague in 2021.
But, Pastva says, that proved to be an interesting fork in the road. Having spent two consecutive seasons on loan, at Czech second-tier side Vyskov and Pardubice, Kinsky had grown used to playing and with his contract due to expire in the summer of 2025, was reluctant to spend time on Slavia Prague’s substitutes’ bench.
“The most interesting thing is that he might not have played for Slavia at all,” Pastva says.
“In the summer of 2024, he made it clear in the media that he wanted to leave at the end of his loan in Pardubice in order to play regularly. However, the club’s number one, Jindrich Stanek, was then injured at the European Championship and Slavia agreed with Kinsky to extend his contract.
“If that hadn’t happened, he probably would have gone to Slovan Liberec, where he wouldn’t have been as visible.”
It was a sliding doors moment. Kinsky became Slavia’s first choice goalkeeper and then set a new club record by keeping 12 clean sheets in 19 games. He and Slavia conceded just seven goals across those 19 matches and at the time of his transfer, they were seven points clear at the top of the Czech First League.
“During that six months,” Pastva says, “he grew into one of the best Czech goalkeepers. He is currently backing up Matej Kovar from Leverkusen (for the national team), but if he plays regularly at Tottenham, he can be expected to become a number one.”
Karel Tvaroh is a former professional player turned broadcaster for Canal+. In the Czech Republic, there is “massive hope” for Kinsky, he tells The Athletic.
“It’s partly because of his character. In a way, he doesn’t seem to be a Czech person,” Tvaroh says. “He has huge confidence, but not arrogance. That’s not something we usually have in ourselves and that helps him to stand out a lot.
“I’ve talked about him with a lot of ex-goalkeepers and they expect him to be a real challenger for Vicario. He doesn’t seem to have a particular weakness.”
Kinsky has impressed so far in his career (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)
In the short term, with Vicario still recovering from surgery, Kinsky might well find himself instantly installed as first choice. It will be a big challenge. Moving from Czech football to the Premier League will be taxing in its own way. Kinsky is equipped for that, Tvaroh says.
“He’s a bit like Petr Cech in that he’s very goal-orientated. He really has a good filter, which helps in this world of social media. It allows him not to listen to that noise and just to focus on his craft.
“But I think his biggest strength is how he can influence the team. That might be quite abstract, but I believe goalkeeping can have an aura. Kinsky’s saves calm his team-mates down because at times it seems like there’s no way he can concede.”
Tottenham’s interest has been quite long term. They had scouts at Deutsche Bank Park when Slavia played against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League in November. They would have seen an excellent performance from Kinsky, too. In the first half, he made a terrific save from a thumping Omar Marmoush drive from distance. In the second, as the screenshot below shows, he denied Hugo Ekitike with an excellent one-on-one stop, with an upright technique typical of his style.
Negotiations for Kinsky began just after Christmas Day and the signing has been driven by Johan Lange, Tottenham’s technical director. Chairman Daniel Levy was involved in the final stages of the talks. With Fraser Forster out of contract in the summer of 2025, the club had always intended to sign a new goalkeeper, but the injury to Vicario in November accelerated their plans. In a data-led process, Kinsky became their primary target.
It is easy to see why. According to data provided by Opta, since July 2023 — when Kinsky made his first appearance in the Czech First League (for Pardubice) — he has made the most catches of any goalkeeper (48) and chosen to punch just nine times. In addition, he has the joint-best save rate of any goalkeeper to make more than five appearances (80.3 per cent) and has the second-best passing accuracy (73.4 per cent) of any goalkeeper to play 10 games or more. Of those passes, 50 per cent have been played long.
Filip Novak is a football data analyst. While Kinsky’s positioning and distribution naturally elicit attention, there are further layers that suggest he should suit Tottenham well.
“Stylistically, he plays high up the pitch and is heavily involved in his team’s build-up and frequently comes for crosses,” Novak says. “His average position of touches in the Czech top tier is the furthest up the pitch this season. Given Tottenham’s high line requires a goalkeeper who can function in that capacity, he’ll be effective. But it is his shot-stopping that truly stands out.”
“In each of his last three seasons, he has been ranked in the 96th+ percentile among the league’s goalkeepers in the post-shot xG-based model (expected goals) evaluating shots both from inside and outside the box. Even for the world’s best players, it is very unusual to post such dominant performances for three consecutive seasons.
“It’s even more remarkable when you consider that he was 21 or younger during these seasons and it’s quite common for young players to be inconsistent. That was not the case for him.”
Even at this early stage of his career, Kinsky has experience playing for teams at different ends of the table, under contrasting circumstances.
“Defensively, Slavia is the most dominant team in the Czech league. Imagine Arsenal-level dominance in terms of expected goals conceded, which means they allow very few dangerous chances. But if they do concede a dangerous attempt, Kinsky is a goalkeeper who makes saves to keep that momentum going. At Tottenham, it will be a different situation for him. Given the range of current injuries to their defensive players, he will face many shots from central areas.
“But that’s nothing new for him, either. Pardubice, where he played the season before his time at Slavia, narrowly escaped relegation that year and he faced the second-highest volume of shots there in the division. In the second tier with Vyskov — that was his first season in senior football as a regular starter — they conceded only 20 non-penalty goals from over 29 post-shot xG.
“Throughout his senior career, he has consistently posted highly above-average results in the claims proficiency metric. In the current season, he’s ranked the best in the Czech league, successfully catching roughly three out of four crosses. That’s useful because of how difficult Tottenham have found it to defend set pieces.”
Set pieces would be an area of focus for any goalkeeper moving to England for the first time. That is especially true for one joining Tottenham, whose struggles with corners have been so pronounced.
Kinsky will bring a different approach. His positioning tends to be aggressive at set pieces. As the images below from a Europa League game against Ajax show, his starting position tends to be closer to the edge of his six-yard box than his goal line. When the corner is taken, he then makes a judgement on whether to come further out or to otherwise retreat to his line and react to whatever happens next.
A review of the corners Slavia Prague have conceded this season shows they rarely employ men on the posts, nor do opponents often try to restrict Kinsky’s movement by surrounding him with attacking players. That, of course, was a common situation faced by Vicario before his injury.
Interestingly, when that does happen to Kinsky, Slavia have proven adept at responding smartly. The images below show a game against Dukla Prague in October. Initially, Dukla try to crowd Kinsky. In response, a pair of defenders pin the two attackers, forcefully moving them out of the way to create freedom and room for a much easier catch.
It’s reasonable to expect some adaptions to English football. There are significant differences between the types of set pieces Tottenham typically face and those Kinsky has seen as a Slavia player, but his aggression and tendency to catch should suit him well.
As should the environment.
From inside Slavia Prague, many accounts of Kinsky convey the traits of a typical early, high achiever — a player who will do more than he needs to before and after training and who wants to be challenged hard by his coaches in sessions.
Sources The Athletic spoke to at the club describe his openness to cognitive training, too, and more innovative ways of developing core goalkeeping skills, such as awareness and reaction speed. It is the portrait, really, of a player in a hurry. Kinsky knows his own mind and wants to be the best goalkeeper he can be — and be so as quickly as possible.
Tottenham will need him to be ready almost immediately.
By their parting message to Antonin Kinsky, Slavia Prague clearly expect the 21-year-old to go a long way.
“You’re a great goalkeeper, kid!”
Tottenham Hotspur will hope so. They completed a €16m (£13.3m; $16.5m) deal for Kinsky on Sunday morning, signing competition for Guglielmo Vicario and one of the most highly-rated young goalkeepers in world football.
“He reminds me of Manuel Neuer,” a scout for a Bundesliga team — who, like all sources in this article, have been granted anonymity to protect relationships — tells The Athletic. “His style has some differences, but he seems bigger than he really is. He has presence and gives off a sense of not being afraid.”
Kinsky’s most tangible quality is his two-footed distribution and his ease on the ball is another tempting Neuer parallel. But he has an accomplished all-round game and is equipped with excellent reflexes, strong reach and the kind of thick-bodied, 6ft 3in (190.5cm) frame so coveted in the modern position. Goalkeeping is in his blood, too.
Michael Pastva is the editor-in-chief of Ruik.cz, a sports website in the Czech Republic.
“Antonin comes from a goalkeeping family,” he says. “His father — also called Antonin — was a national team goalkeeper, so he had a great future.”
His father remains a big influence. He was coached by him at his first club, Tempo Prague, and then later during his time in the Czech Republic Under-19 side. Tonda, as Antonin junior is known, moved to Dukla Prague in 2018, made his professional debut in 2020, and then joined Slavia Prague in 2021.
But, Pastva says, that proved to be an interesting fork in the road. Having spent two consecutive seasons on loan, at Czech second-tier side Vyskov and Pardubice, Kinsky had grown used to playing and with his contract due to expire in the summer of 2025, was reluctant to spend time on Slavia Prague’s substitutes’ bench.
“The most interesting thing is that he might not have played for Slavia at all,” Pastva says.
“In the summer of 2024, he made it clear in the media that he wanted to leave at the end of his loan in Pardubice in order to play regularly. However, the club’s number one, Jindrich Stanek, was then injured at the European Championship and Slavia agreed with Kinsky to extend his contract.
“If that hadn’t happened, he probably would have gone to Slovan Liberec, where he wouldn’t have been as visible.”
It was a sliding doors moment. Kinsky became Slavia’s first choice goalkeeper and then set a new club record by keeping 12 clean sheets in 19 games. He and Slavia conceded just seven goals across those 19 matches and at the time of his transfer, they were seven points clear at the top of the Czech First League.
“During that six months,” Pastva says, “he grew into one of the best Czech goalkeepers. He is currently backing up Matej Kovar from Leverkusen (for the national team), but if he plays regularly at Tottenham, he can be expected to become a number one.”
Karel Tvaroh is a former professional player turned broadcaster for Canal+. In the Czech Republic, there is “massive hope” for Kinsky, he tells The Athletic.
“It’s partly because of his character. In a way, he doesn’t seem to be a Czech person,” Tvaroh says. “He has huge confidence, but not arrogance. That’s not something we usually have in ourselves and that helps him to stand out a lot.
“I’ve talked about him with a lot of ex-goalkeepers and they expect him to be a real challenger for Vicario. He doesn’t seem to have a particular weakness.”
Kinsky has impressed so far in his career (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)
In the short term, with Vicario still recovering from surgery, Kinsky might well find himself instantly installed as first choice. It will be a big challenge. Moving from Czech football to the Premier League will be taxing in its own way. Kinsky is equipped for that, Tvaroh says.
“He’s a bit like Petr Cech in that he’s very goal-orientated. He really has a good filter, which helps in this world of social media. It allows him not to listen to that noise and just to focus on his craft.
“But I think his biggest strength is how he can influence the team. That might be quite abstract, but I believe goalkeeping can have an aura. Kinsky’s saves calm his team-mates down because at times it seems like there’s no way he can concede.”
Tottenham’s interest has been quite long term. They had scouts at Deutsche Bank Park when Slavia played against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League in November. They would have seen an excellent performance from Kinsky, too. In the first half, he made a terrific save from a thumping Omar Marmoush drive from distance. In the second, as the screenshot below shows, he denied Hugo Ekitike with an excellent one-on-one stop, with an upright technique typical of his style.
Negotiations for Kinsky began just after Christmas Day and the signing has been driven by Johan Lange, Tottenham’s technical director. Chairman Daniel Levy was involved in the final stages of the talks. With Fraser Forster out of contract in the summer of 2025, the club had always intended to sign a new goalkeeper, but the injury to Vicario in November accelerated their plans. In a data-led process, Kinsky became their primary target.
It is easy to see why. According to data provided by Opta, since July 2023 — when Kinsky made his first appearance in the Czech First League (for Pardubice) — he has made the most catches of any goalkeeper (48) and chosen to punch just nine times. In addition, he has the joint-best save rate of any goalkeeper to make more than five appearances (80.3 per cent) and has the second-best passing accuracy (73.4 per cent) of any goalkeeper to play 10 games or more. Of those passes, 50 per cent have been played long.
Filip Novak is a football data analyst. While Kinsky’s positioning and distribution naturally elicit attention, there are further layers that suggest he should suit Tottenham well.
“Stylistically, he plays high up the pitch and is heavily involved in his team’s build-up and frequently comes for crosses,” Novak says. “His average position of touches in the Czech top tier is the furthest up the pitch this season. Given Tottenham’s high line requires a goalkeeper who can function in that capacity, he’ll be effective. But it is his shot-stopping that truly stands out.”
“In each of his last three seasons, he has been ranked in the 96th+ percentile among the league’s goalkeepers in the post-shot xG-based model (expected goals) evaluating shots both from inside and outside the box. Even for the world’s best players, it is very unusual to post such dominant performances for three consecutive seasons.
“It’s even more remarkable when you consider that he was 21 or younger during these seasons and it’s quite common for young players to be inconsistent. That was not the case for him.”
Even at this early stage of his career, Kinsky has experience playing for teams at different ends of the table, under contrasting circumstances.
“Defensively, Slavia is the most dominant team in the Czech league. Imagine Arsenal-level dominance in terms of expected goals conceded, which means they allow very few dangerous chances. But if they do concede a dangerous attempt, Kinsky is a goalkeeper who makes saves to keep that momentum going. At Tottenham, it will be a different situation for him. Given the range of current injuries to their defensive players, he will face many shots from central areas.
“But that’s nothing new for him, either. Pardubice, where he played the season before his time at Slavia, narrowly escaped relegation that year and he faced the second-highest volume of shots there in the division. In the second tier with Vyskov — that was his first season in senior football as a regular starter — they conceded only 20 non-penalty goals from over 29 post-shot xG.
“Throughout his senior career, he has consistently posted highly above-average results in the claims proficiency metric. In the current season, he’s ranked the best in the Czech league, successfully catching roughly three out of four crosses. That’s useful because of how difficult Tottenham have found it to defend set pieces.”
Set pieces would be an area of focus for any goalkeeper moving to England for the first time. That is especially true for one joining Tottenham, whose struggles with corners have been so pronounced.
Kinsky will bring a different approach. His positioning tends to be aggressive at set pieces. As the images below from a Europa League game against Ajax show, his starting position tends to be closer to the edge of his six-yard box than his goal line. When the corner is taken, he then makes a judgement on whether to come further out or to otherwise retreat to his line and react to whatever happens next.
A review of the corners Slavia Prague have conceded this season shows they rarely employ men on the posts, nor do opponents often try to restrict Kinsky’s movement by surrounding him with attacking players. That, of course, was a common situation faced by Vicario before his injury.
Interestingly, when that does happen to Kinsky, Slavia have proven adept at responding smartly. The images below show a game against Dukla Prague in October. Initially, Dukla try to crowd Kinsky. In response, a pair of defenders pin the two attackers, forcefully moving them out of the way to create freedom and room for a much easier catch.
It’s reasonable to expect some adaptions to English football. There are significant differences between the types of set pieces Tottenham typically face and those Kinsky has seen as a Slavia player, but his aggression and tendency to catch should suit him well.
As should the environment.
From inside Slavia Prague, many accounts of Kinsky convey the traits of a typical early, high achiever — a player who will do more than he needs to before and after training and who wants to be challenged hard by his coaches in sessions.
Sources The Athletic spoke to at the club describe his openness to cognitive training, too, and more innovative ways of developing core goalkeeping skills, such as awareness and reaction speed. It is the portrait, really, of a player in a hurry. Kinsky knows his own mind and wants to be the best goalkeeper he can be — and be so as quickly as possible.
Tottenham will need him to be ready almost immediately.
