Juventus: Is Nicola Leali Ready to Be Called Buffon's Heir?

Gianluigi Buffon is a massive figure in Juventus' history. He is one of their most-capped, most decorated players, and one who stood by the club after its forced relegation in 2006.  

The team captain is on the level of Alessandro Del Piero, Gaetano Scirea and Dino Zoff as a true legend of the club.

He recently signed a new contract that ties him to the club until the end of the 2016-17 season, a deal that will likely be the last of his career. He'll be 39 by the time the contract ends, and he has previously suffered significant injuries.

Though no injury has caused him to miss more than one game at a time since the 2010 back injury that forced him from all but 45 minutes of the World Cup and half of the Serie A season, an older player with a history of injuries is always at risk.

Ever since that back injury—which at the time caused many to question how much time he had left as a top-level 'keeper—the question has frequently been asked, who will replace Buffon when he hangs up his gloves?

The captaincy will almost certainly pass to Giorgio Chiellini when Buffon retires, but who will start in goal is a question that hasn't yet been totally answered. It's still not entirely certain whether that replacement will be brought in or promoted from within the club.

If it does come from within, it will almost certainly be Nicola Leali.

Purchased from Brescia in the summer of 2012, Leali is one of a quartet of talented young goalkeepers coming through the ranks in Italy. He has, however, always seemed to lag behind the rest of the group.

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Genoa's Mattia Perin has been getting top-flight minutes since the year Leali arrived at Juve. Inter's Francesco Bardi is in his second season on loan with a Serie A club and has been the primary goalkeeper for Italy's U21 squad for nearly three years. Simone Scuffet—at only 18 years old—spent the second half of last season as the starter at Udinese and generated significant interest from Atletico Madrid this summer.

Leali, by comparison, doesn't seem to be progressing as fast. He spent the last two years on loan in Serie B and has managed only five international youth caps since he progressed past the U19 level—and only one with the U21s.

His time in the second division was certainly valuable, and Leali has improved over the course of the last two years. In particular, he's kicked his habit of trying to catch every ball that comes his way when a punch or parry is sufficient.

Now that he's getting Serie A minutes, it's possible to start seriously gauging how effective he'd be in Juve's goal—and if it's time to start seriously calling him Buffon's heir.

In the first three months of the season, Leali certainly had games in which he's looked very good. Ironically, one if his best came against his parent club.

The final score of the game between the two sides at the Juventus Stadium was 3-0, but Leali was not to be faulted for any of the goals. The first was a penalty—one that Leali managed to get a hand on—the other two were the products of awful defending that left him totally exposed.

What Leali did do was keep the score at that level. He thrice denied Sebastian Giovinco with circus saves eerily reminiscent of the man who was standing in the opposite goal. According to Squawka, he racked up five other stops.

He was similarly impressive in the Seahorses' recent 1-1 draw with Sampdoria. He made six saves in that contest and claimed an equal number of crosses. More importantly, his distribution was much better—and had an 82 percent accuracy rate—than it was earlier in the year.

Distribution is one of the keys to Leali's growth. Buffon is a master of it. As this Squawka comparison chart shows, Buffon's distribution accuracy is an astounding 85 percent—the best among any goalkeeper in the league with at least 10 starts. Leali's numbers hover around 55 percent, but there has been a marked improvement over the course of the season.

If you use Cesena's match against Inter—in which Leali was sent off and subsequently suspended for two games—as a line of demarcation, you can see how much he has improved. In the seven games before that match, he was accurate on just 50 percent of his distribution attempts; in the three games since his suspension, that number has shot up 18 percentage points.

The need for improvement in this area is a microcosm of what Leali needs to improve in order to become a truly elite 'keeper. He is a superb shot-stopper and can be truly evocative of Buffon in his 2006 prime.

But Buffon became the best goalkeeper of his generation—and possibly the best goalkeeper the world has ever known—because he thoroughly mastered the other responsibilities of the position.

He is an imperious presence in the box, claiming crosses and snuffing out runs with ease. He is one of the best at marshaling the rest of his defense, a quality best displayed in the 2011-12 season, when Juve switched from a 4-3-3 to a 3-5-2—a formation Buffon had never played behind—and boasted the best defensive record in Europe.

These are aspects that Leali is still learning to various degrees. While he's only failed when attempting to claim a cross twice this season, he still has a lot to learn about directing his defenders. Some of the blame here can be directed at Cesena's lack of quality in the back—especially when compared to the veritable wall Buffon has had in front of him for the last three-and-a-half years.  

But a well-directed defense can become more than the sum of its parts. When it's done right with the talent Juve can provide, a defensive unit can become nigh-on impenetrable.

One other statistic on Leali's Squawka profile that caught the eye was the fact that 14 of the 18 goals he has conceded this season have beaten him to his right. Incidentally, the graph that charts where his saves came from shows a slightly higher density on the 'keeper's left.

Because this is his first top-flight season, there aren't any reliable statistics that can lead to the conclusion that this is evidence of a definite trend. It could be that he's much weaker going to the right and the saves graph is evidence of this. It could also simply mean that teams attack Cesena's right flank more often because that's where they're more vulnerable.

The sample size is far too small to make a definitive judgement, but it's something worth keeping an eye on. If there truly is a weakness going to his right, that will have to be corrected.

Over the course of the season, Leali has made marked improvements. He's already a high-quality shot-stopper, and his peripheral numbers have been improving as the season has progressed.

Is it enough to definitively declare him Buffon's heir apparent?

In this writer's personal opinion, not just yet. He is close. By the end of the season, he might even be very close. But compared to Mattia Perin's loan year with Pescara in 2012-13—which marked him out as a star in the making—Leali hasn't made the same impression. Yet.

Fortunately for him, he'll have the next two seasons to develop. He'll almost certainly go out on loan to another lower mid-table Serie A club next year. After that, he could be farmed out again or stay in Turin as backup to learn from the master himself. Either way, he'll almost certainly be improving.

While not quite ready to be anointed at present, Nicola Leali is a high-level prospect. If he continues developing, he will certainly be the most cost-effective way for Juve to fill the void when Buffon ends his playing career.

He's almost there, but he isn't wearing the prince's crown just yet.