Mike Penders will join Chelsea in the summer – is he ready for the Premier League?

New York Times

20-03-2025

In mid-February, we invited requests from our subscribers for articles you might like to read on The Athletic as part of our latest Inspired By You series. Nemanja M. asked for a piece on Mike Penders, his potential, and whether he could be a generational talent.
Liam Twomey took a look…
Chelsea's weekly goalkeeper psychodrama took another twist before Sunday's 1-0 defeat against Arsenal, with head coach Enzo Maresca's effective admission that Robert Sanchez has been restored as his No 1 after being given time out of the team to 'rest his head'.
Sanchez went on to deliver his familiar mixed bag of erratic distribution and impressive saves at the Emirates Stadium. There still appears to be no realistic prospect of the Spaniard winning the trust of Chelsea's match-going supporters anytime soon.
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Filip Jorgensen clearly did not do enough in his Premier League audition to convince Maresca of his superiority to Sanchez. The wait for the truly elite goalkeeper Stamford Bridge has craved since Thibaut Courtois pushed his way to Real Madrid in the summer of 2018 will stretch at least until the end of this season.
But could the answer be close at hand and could it be another giant Belgian from Genk who carries a squinting resemblance to Courtois?
Mike Penders — only 19 years old but standing almost 6ft 7in (200cm) with a formidable wingspan — will join Chelsea this summer. His arrival comes almost 12 months after a deal was agreed to bring him to London under the noses of several other major European clubs.
The imminent arrivals of exciting attackers Estevao and Kendry Paez have garnered more headlines, but given the lack of clarity at the base of Maresca's team and the scarcity of world-class goalkeepers, Penders has the potential to make even more of an impact.
In the short term, Chelsea and Maresca must assess his level of readiness at the end of his first professional season. To date, Penders has made only 11 appearances in the Belgian Pro League, having been promoted to Genk's first-choice goalkeeper in January. That is a perilously small sample size from which to make definitive judgements.
Penders' outings for Genk are, however, substantial enough for a goalkeeping specialist to get a clear sense of his style as well as his strengths and weaknesses at this early stage. With that in mind, The Athletic enlisted the expertise of Matt Pyzdrowski, a retired professional goalkeeper who works as head academy goalkeeping coach for Swedish champions Malmo.
Here is a breakdown of several key aspects of Penders' game.
Pyzdrowski's overriding impression of Penders is a startling one. 'I'll start with his style of play and the two goalkeepers I'm going to name will get people excited, but at the same time, I also want to pump the brakes,' he says. 'The two goalkeepers he reminds me of are Courtois and Ederson. He's kind of a mix of the two.'
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Ederson shines through more in Penders' distribution — in particular, his ability to find team-mates higher up the pitch with impressively accurate longer passes.
'He's not as composed with the ball at his feet as Ederson yet, but what I really like about Penders is his ability to go long,' Pyzdrowski adds. 'He's able to stretch the field just like Ederson and start counter-attacks from nothing, which is a huge asset. The way he hits the ball is fast, direct, but also very accurate.'
On the surface, this particular quality seems a little redundant under Maresca, who has pledged to substitute Sanchez and Jorgensen this season if they kick long. But there is an important distinction to make between a goalkeeper kicking long and passing long; Maresca's primary issue is with the former and his desire to avoid simply gifting possession back to the opposition.
Penders' ability to identify and hit a longer pass over or through an opposition press could be an asset to any high-possession team. His technique is also polished over shorter distances.
But when it comes to baiting the opposition press as Maresca frequently wants his goalkeeper to do, Penders is more of a work in progress. 'One area where he'll need to develop is playing under pressure,' Pyzdrowski admits. 'Genk love to build up from the back, but often he has time on the ball. Even if a press comes, it isn't really a high press.
'He's never been punished for a poor pass (by conceding a goal), but he gets stressed when the opposition really press. That's not unique to him among goalkeepers — Ederson is an outlier.
'Penders will need to develop that when he takes the next step (to Chelsea) because teams will notice that and press him high.'
When not being harried, Penders' relatively high comfort level on the ball — even well outside his penalty area — seems well suited to Maresca's system.
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'He's very comfortable playing high off his line with his feet in the build-up,' Pyzdrowski says. 'That's the way Genk play and Chelsea like that as well. And with his ability to go long, if he's standing 30 yards from goal with the ball at his feet, that means a ball into the opponent's box is on and he can very easily start an attack.'
Even in an era when elite clubs and their coaches increasingly want 11 skilled outfielders in possession, keeping the ball out of the net remains the fundamental differentiator of a great goalkeeper. Pyzdrowski sees rich promise in Penders' shot-stopping ability, but also plenty of room for physical and technical improvement.
'One area he needs to improve is his ability to traverse his goalmouth,' he says. 'He can be a bit slow in some of his actions and footwork. That's not crazy because he is only 19, but when you watch clips of him, it's not often that he traverses his whole goalmouth and makes an extension save.
'You could say that's because he has really good positioning but when he's out of position, he doesn't necessarily get over in time. When he doesn't need to take a lot of steps he's very, very good. When the ball is more towards the side of the goal, low or high, he needs to get a bit more explosive in those situations.
'Part of it is work in the gym with a good strength and conditioning coach — focusing on explosive plyometric exercises, jumping up and down and from side to side.
'Controlling your feet underneath you is hard for a lot of taller goalkeepers and that's part of what made Courtois and (Petr) Cech so great. They were very tall but also very quick traversing their goalmouth to make the big saves their teams needed them to make.'
This also applies to shots Penders tries to save above his head. 'When fans see him play, he will probably remind them of Courtois,' Pyzdrowski adds. 'Even though he's really tall, he bends down quite low and holds his hands low at his sides as well. That's something Courtois has done for a long time, a staple of his technique.
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'The thing that makes Courtois so great is that he can go from that low position and move his hands up very quickly to get balls above his head. That's an area Penders will have to improve. That comes back to the explosion and agility, for him to dig his feet into the ground and use his trailing leg to set and push off towards the ball.
'In a lot of the goals he concedes, he doesn't do it and just falls to the ground rather than using his legs to get himself to the ball.'
It might not come as a huge surprise that, given his size, Penders is already very adept at claiming high balls into his penalty area.
'Commanding his area is what he's best at,' Pyzdrowski says of Penders. 'He's really, really excellent at taking an aggressive position and very comfortable coming and taking high balls into his penalty area, even right up to the edge of the box. His timing is very good and he loves to catch the ball rather than punch.
'That's why I call him a mix between Ederson and Courtois, because Ederson has that aggressiveness commanding his box but Courtois has the hands to catch and hold the ball.'
Penders' preference for catching the ball could be a refreshing break from the growing Premier League trend of goalkeepers punching away in-swinging corner kicks. It could also potentially provide more reassurance to a Chelsea defence that can still appear uncertain when defending set pieces.
His penalty area presence for Genk is not only felt when facing high balls. 'On his line and with balls around his area, he's really good,' Pyzdrowski adds. 'He's a big guy but he's very quick to pounce when there's a free ball in and around his box. He uses his body and has really good timing in those situations.'
The ability to defend far from goal has become an important skill for modern goalkeepers and a vital one in teams, such as Chelsea, who seek to defend with a high line for long stretches of games.
'He's very fast off his line — almost too fast because he's very uncontrolled in those situations,' Pyzdrowski says of Penders. 'A lot of the time he rushes out recklessly and you end up giving away fouls and penalties. Other times he's rushed out and opened up an angle to concede a goal, so his decision-making in those situations will have to get better.
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'In that way, he also reminds me of Ederson, who has been better in recent years but had some ugly moments (early on at Manchester City) with his timing in one-versus-one situations.'
Ederson's example suggests that this particular flaw in Penders' game is eminently fixable.
'This is not strange because he's so young and he doesn't have a tonne of game time at the top,' Pyzdrowski adds. 'As a goalkeeper coach, I would much rather have a goalkeeper who's too aggressive than too passive. You can always rein in a goalkeeper who is too aggressive, but it's very hard to get a passive goalkeeper to play more aggressively because they're so rooted to their line.'
By the time Courtois finally made his competitive Chelsea debut in August 2014, he was 22, with four full seasons as a No 1 goalkeeper behind him — three of which were spent on loan at Atletico Madrid, where he won the Europa League, Copa del Rey and La Liga — and reached a Champions League final. He already had a case for being the best goalkeeper in the world.
Penders, clearly, is at a far earlier point in his development. 'He's a project,' Pyzdrowski says. 'If there are Chelsea fans out there hoping he arrives in the summer and competes for the No 1 spot, it's too early.
'It would also be a risk to throw him into that situation. That's not to say a 19-year-old can't handle it, there are examples, but other goalkeepers have got a chance too early and faded because it crushes their spirit and beats them down.
'If Chelsea really believe in him, they'll be smart and maybe go through pre-season or half a season with him before loaning him out again to continue to get first-team football and develop.'
The key difference is that with Courtois, Chelsea had the rare luxury of being patient because of the enduring greatness of Cech. None of the current goalkeepers on the club's books are anywhere near as accomplished, making the question of how Penders' development is handled much more fraught.
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But there is no doubt or debate about his potential upside. 'When you have someone two metres tall and as quick and agile as he is, it's a huge advantage for him and something that gets noticed because it's not normal,' Pyzdrowski says of Penders.
'If he gets game time and works on his deficiencies, it's not hard to see him being one of the best goalkeepers in the world in a few years.'