STATS: Ronwen Williams Nominated As World’s Best Goalkeeper

On Wednesday evening, the Ballon d’Or organizers announced the 2024 Ballon d’Or nominees for various football awards. The nominations are the first step towards recognizing the best footballers in the world in the 2023/24 season. Among these is the Yashin Trophy, an award that is presented annually to the best-performing goalkeeper in the world. Sundowns and South Africa’s Number 1 Ronwen Williams was among the 10 goalkeepers nominated for the award.

1 – Williams is the fourth African goalkeeper to be nominated for the Yashin Trophy (after Andre Onana, Edouard Mendy & Yassine Bounou), but the first ever to be nominated while playing their club football outside of Europe.

Background

The Yashin trophy was introduced to the Ballon d’Or awards in 2019 and is now in its fifth installment (2019 – 2024, excluding the Covid-affected 2021). It was introduced partly to counteract the long-standing bias towards attacking players for major individual awards like the Ballon d’Or. Goalkeepers have too often been overlooked for these honors. Lev Yashin was a Soviet goalkeeper, and he is widely regarded as the greatest goalkeeper of all time, and award also honours his legacy.

1 – Only one goalkeeper in the world (Lev Yashin from the Soviet Union) has ever won the Ballon d’Or (in 1963).

Williams At AFCON

Of the 50 Yashin trophy nominations since the awards’ 2019 inception, 49 have been playing for European clubs, with Ronwen Williams the first non-European-based player to be nominated. His nomination comes on the back of solid seasons at Sundowns, and in particular for Bafana Bafana. At the Africa Cup of Nations, Williams’ exploits were key to Bafana reaching a first semi-final in 24 years. He became the first Bafana Bafana goalkeeper to keep five clean sheets at a single AFCON tournament, eclipsing Andre Arendse’s four in 1996. In the game against Cape Verde, he became the first goalkeeper in AFCON history to save four penalties in a single penalty shootout. No keeper has ever saved more in a shootout at an AFCON/EUROS/Copa America or World Cup. 

4.4 – Based on the quality of on-target shots he has faced, Ronwen Williams prevented 4.4 goals at AFCON2023 – more than any other goalkeeper at the tournament.

For context, the best goalkeeper at the EUROs Giorgi Mamardashvili prevented 4.7 goals.

Williams Locally

Including shootouts, Williams has saved 14 penalties since the start of this season for club & country. Overall, he kept 35 clean sheets in 59 games in the period under review (the last year), with most of these (30) coming at Sundowns. Wiliams was Premiership Goalkeeper of the Season and Footballer of the Season locally. He marshaled a Sundowns defence that conceded just 11 goals on their way to a seventh consecutive title. Sundowns set a new record of going 29 games unbeaten from the start of a season (53 games unbeaten overall) and they would have been Invincibles if not for losing to Cape Town City on the final day.

11 – The 11 goals conceded by Sundowns in 2023/24 equaled the PSL record for the fewest goals conceded by a team in one season (11), which was set by Kaizer Chiefs in 2003/4.