Roma goalkeeper Pau Lopez shrugs off the pressure of following Alisson Becker, his howler in the Derby della Capitale and poor penalty record.
The Spaniard was brought in from Real Betis for €23.5m last summer and has so far struggled to win over the fans, especially ones who had been accustomed to Alisson.
“There was talk of this from the moment I arrived. I always thought that Pau is Pau and Alisson is Alisson,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
Roma goalkeeper Pau Lopez shrugs off the pressure of following Alisson Becker, his howler in the Derby della Capitale and poor penalty record.
The Spaniard was brought in from Real Betis for €23.5m last summer and has so far struggled to win over the fans, especially ones who had been accustomed to Alisson.
“There was talk of this from the moment I arrived. I always thought that Pau is Pau and Alisson is Alisson,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“In my view, the best goalkeepers in the world right now are Jan Oblak and Marc-Andre Ter Stegen.”
Pau Lopez’s most famous howler was in the biggest game of all, the Rome Derby against arch-rivals Lazio, when inexplicably fumbling in the six-yard box.
“The truth is, I never thought about that again, because it was for me an error like any other. I know that people treat the derby differently, but as far as I am concerned, there’s no difference making an error against Lazio, SPAL, Inter or Juventus. I should avoid these mistakes, but that’s it.”
Another concern was when Pau Lopez fully admitted he was not very good at saving penalties.
“A penalty is a matter of intuition: you’ve either got it or you don’t. You can read up on information about where their specialists tend to kick, in which corner they aimed their most recent spot-kicks, but it still all depends on you.
“There are goalkeepers who are very good on penalties and others, like me, who aren’t. It’s a difficult aspect of your game to work on.”