By its very essence, the position of goalkeeper meets specific codes and criteria. When the irremovable holder slips away, the delicate question of the successor arises. The specifications assigned to the newcomer are often substantial. It is up to him to follow, more or less, in the footsteps of his predecessor, or to cultivate, on the contrary, his difference by affixing his own style. Sometimes, reality is located, a little, in a rather loose in-between. At 27, Mike Maignan seems to have excelled for more than a decade in the art of reducing to their simplest expression the prosaically called “transition” periods.
