One of the best wonderkids in Football Manager 2014 when it comes to goalkeepers is most definitely Juventus youngster Nicola Leali.
One of the best wonderkids in Football Manager 2014 when it comes to goalkeepers is most definitely Juventus youngster Nicola Leali.
 Current Ability  Potential Ability  |
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Italian / 
Castiglione delle StiviereNicola Leali - Starting attributes
Nicola Leali - Development
Nicola Leali - Career history stats
Nicola Leali - FM Scout Review
We compared him to the legendary Gianluigi Buffon, so let’s see together is Nicola new Buffon or a flop from Italy.
At the start of FM14, Nicola has fairly good ratings that indicate he could become a top class goalkeeper. Solid technical attributes required for this role, such as Aerial Ability, Handling, Kicking, One on Ones etc. He also has high Determination 18, and solid Work Rate attribute of 14, which combined with his potential ability of -9 promise a lot of great things to come from this young lad.
His Physical attributes are very well developed even at the start of the game, so there should be no need to train him even further in this category.
Once developed, Nicola does resemble to the great ‘Gigi’ quite a lot. He is even better than the legendary goalkeeper in Handling, Kicking, and Free Kick Taking, but lacks quality in Eccentricity, Reflexes, One On Ones and Tendency To Punch. Mentally they are fairly the same, but let’s not forget that Leali still has some time to reach his development peak. Physically Leali beats Buffon easily.
So, definitely Leali has potential to become a legendary goalkeeper like Buffon, but it’s all up to you on how will you train him as well as how much first team football you give him.
Even his career stats suggest that we’re dealing with a world class goalkeeper. In almost every season he managed to achieve more clean sheets than any other wonderkid goalkeeper we’ve seen.
His estimated cost would be somewhere between £2.5M - £5M range. This is the price you’ll have to pay Juventus at the start of the second season, as he is loaned by the Italian giant to one of their affiliate clubs.
Nicola Leali is a definite must buy wonderkid in Football Manager 2014, and one that comes closest to be compared to the great Gianluigi ‘Gigi’ Buffon.
