David De Gea's Italian renaissance shows the vital importance of healthy environment in allowing class to shine through.
After parting ways with Manchester United in 2023 following a scapegoated tenure under Erik ten Hag, David de Gea seemed to be at a crossroads.
Upon leaving Old Trafford, the Spaniard momentarily became the last player of the Sir Alex Ferguson era to move to pastures new. De Gea spent nearly a year without a club, missing out on game time during the 2023/24 season and was frequently filmed training at Accrington Stanley’s stadium keeping sharp with a private goalkeeper coach. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the next announcement from the Spaniard would be the one where he hung his gloves up.
And then, in early August, came the birth of what has become a perhaps surprising renaissance.
De Gea signed a short-term deal with Fiorentina club on 9th August 2024. ‘I received many offers," he admitted, but that ‘I wanted to play in Italy. The negotiation was simple. Fiorentina was the best option.’
He admitted that retiring had never really crossed his mind, but that 'it was just difficult to find motivation for a new chapter after 12 years at a top club like Man United… and I finally felt that at Fiorentina.'
Since, de Gea and former Evertonian Moise Kean have been leading an unlikely title bid by Fiorentina. At the time of writing, Raffaelle Palladino’s side sit four points off the top spot, in fourth place in Serie A.
Within two months of arriving in Italy, de Gea had saved two penalties and also made crucial stops that secured a 2-1 victory against AC Milan. He seemed quickly on his way to becoming a fan favourite.
‘He's still a monster’, said Palladino following the AC Milan victory. ‘David de Gea is a world class player. We can see why he is a champion, a true champion. We have to thank him every day, he is a good goalkeeper and a model to follow.’
The de Gea we have seen at Fiorentina is the de Gea of old, but how has the Spaniard managed to hit the ground running with such gravitas despite a year without any professional match minutes?
Well, for reasons antithetical to why his career had ground to a stagnating malaise in Manchester.
Back in the summer of 2023, we wrote about how De Gea, so often, was the firefighter at the top of the Manchester United ladder, heading first into the fumes. He departed Old Trafford with a complicated legacy. The Spaniard’s reign between its goalposts had, for the most part, been one of dampening the flames on behalf of an underperforming team. Since 2016, little consistent success - and increasing criticism - had been thrown his way as the Manchester side fumbled their way through managers and, on average, down the league table.
The number of press conferences and post-match interviews in which he faced the cameras as the playing squad’s spokesperson only increased in times of turbulence. Sometimes, it was his own errors that he held his hands up for. Other times, it was to answer for the shortcomings of the team. In neither case did de Gea ever disassociate himself from the blame. He never threw anybody under the bus, but was often the scapegoat.
The ‘weight’ of playing for Manchester United had almost accumulated solely on de Gea’s shoulders. As the last man of the Sir Alex Ferguson era, he was carrying the burden of an underperforming squad and was the last remnant of a team whose fans had perpetually high expectations for, even when the position of the club called for the opposite.
But at Fiorentina, what de Gea has found is freedom.
Unlike Joe Hart, who was the last big name Premier League goalkeeping export to Italy in search of a revived career, de Gea’s time at United had been on a slow, downward trajectory. Whereas Hart’s career had been turned completely upside down within the space of a few months (first at EURO 2016 and then upon Pep Guardiola’s arrival in Manchester), partly for reasons beyond his control, de Gea needed to leave United.
Hart never got the chance to prove Guardiola wrong; it wasn’t as if he was in the same holistic position at City as de Gea had been in the red half of town, expected to leave - when, not if. For the Spaniard, it was like watching the same squeaky record turning, playing only an intermittently jovial melody, with the audience knowing that sooner or later the vinyl would grind to a halt - being able to do only so much on a record player than so badly needed fixing at its core. Deep down, we all knew that de Gea’s time at United was probably at its natural end.
De Gea’s resurgence feels like a genuine rebirth.
The media never strays far from a negative story, and plenty of press remained whirling around de Gea’s activities away from club football during the 2023/24 season. However, the Spaniard had that time away from the matchday spotlight, the pressures of high expectations, and the near-inevitability of some form of criticism (justified or otherwise) bubbling out of a wider cauldron of tension that ten Hag never quelled.
No overestimation can be made of the importance of a calm and unclouded mind between the sticks. De Gea’s year out was the genuine reset that Hart, for example, never got following his ousting by Guardiola. But, beyond a mental refocus, there has been a deeper psychological shift that the Spaniard has got the chance to formulate in Italy.
And that’s momentum.
They say people are products of their environment. The environment that de Gea found himself in at United had become stagnant. Overpromise and underdelivery was a recipe for disaster frequently cooked up. But Fiorentina are underdogs. 2016 was the last time that the Tuscan side had finished in the top five in Serie A. De Gea himself had to become a challenger - and was kept out of the side for the first few matches of the season by Pietro Terracciano. There was no grandeur or hierarchy, with Palladino confirming that no fixed starting order had been written on paper.
And that challenge has been embraced triumphantly so far by both de Gea and the Tuscan side. De Gea is no longer having to prop up underperforming elevens. In contrast, he has become more of a soldier in the trenches with his teammates as the front line moves up the Serie A table, rather than the doomed officer destined to take the blame in some capacity when the United offensive all too often ground to a halt.
This spirit is collective. There are stories that draw similarities to de Gea’s throughout Fiorentina’s squad. Those of left back Robin Gosens, who joined Fiorentina on deadline on loan from Union Berlin, and Edoardo Bove, a Roma academy graduate who struggled to establish himself with the first team have both recaptured the form that was once touted to take them to the top, raising eyebrows and gaining a first international call up in a year, in the case of Gosens.
Tragically, following a collapse on-field, it looks unlikely that Bove will be able to play professional football in Italy again, though he is said to be recovering, thankfully.
We can physically see that de Gea has harnessed this momentum. He is drawing praise not just for his clubmanship or from his senior status in the squad, but from the increasingly frequent spectacle of a number of world class saves he is making. That flair is intrinsic, and it flows when confidence flows. De Gea is playing with a naturality again, and that goes beyond any tactical agency.
That being said, Palladino’s tactical system is also more flexible than that of ten Hag’s. It has allowed de Gea to focus on his traditional shot stopping strength, without the narrative that he isn’t ‘right’ for the system. He’s right for the role of the goalkeeper, and that is what has been emphasised so far in Italy.
De Gea’s remarkable turnaround has drawn widespread admiration. Former Italy goalkeeper Marco Amelia called him the ‘best-performing goalkeeper in Serie A’. Former teammates and pundits have also weighed in. One Serie A analyst described his penalty-saving heroics as evidence that he ‘still belongs among the elite’, and even rival players, like Como’s Edoardo Goldaniga, admitted they were left in awe after witnessing de Gea’s acrobatics in their 2-0 defeat by the Tuscan side.
For fans and neutrals alike, De Gea’s Italian renaissance is a story of reset and renewal. Class is permanent as they say, but the appropriate conditions need to exist for that to shine. De Gea never lost his ability, but he seemed lost - as did United. What he’s found in Tuscany has clearly had a deeper impact than a simple tactical reformation.
