In Zion Suzuki, Aston Villa have a goalkeeper who passes like a midfielder with either foot

Zion Suzuki is a towering, imposing presence. He is 6ft 2in but, given how broad-shouldered and muscular he is, looks even bigger.

“He’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen a goalkeeper with that physical shape, and just this dynamic, explosive jumping power,” Dennis Rudel, Suzuki’s goalkeeping coach at Belgian Pro League side Sint-Truiden, tells The Athletic. “It’s almost not human. When I trained in the first week with him, he had a belt on and was doing resistance work. He was so physically strong that I thought he was going to rip the belt off. 

“This unbelievable physical power means he has such strong hands. So when he’s doing low-power dives, when he touches the ball, it goes a distance. A lot of goalkeepers, shots go through them, but with him, the hands are so big and so powerful.”

Since arriving last month, Suzuki has settled at Aston Villa impressively. After just a handful of training sessions, team-mates spoke privately of how impressed they were. Although not hugely tested so far when it comes to the goalkeeping fundamentals of saving shots in games, his distribution has been eye-catching. 

Two-footed, poised and with a great range of passing, Villa’s build-up appears more varied with the Japan international.

Prior to his arrival from Parma, Villa sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, remarked on Suzuki’s excellent long-range kicking. They anticipated that the 24-year-old’s striking ability would help the team progress the ball quicker, either by accurate passes over opposition defences or directly into the spare player across the frontline.

Such theories were substantiated less than half an hour into his debut against Arsenal. 

Suzuki identified George Hemmings had run beyond his direct marker, Ben White, down the left. Effortlessly, Suzuki hit a pass straight to Hemmings’ chest. In a matter of seconds, Suzuki’s vision had created a promising crossing opportunity.

In the next match away to Hull City, Suzuki picked out Hemmings again, but this time intending for the ball to drop in front of the 19-year-old.

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One benefit of Emiliano Martinez’s long goodbye was Villa having time to map out the road ahead. The best part of two summers were spent sourcing Martinez’s successor, meaning the scouting department could provide heavily detailed reports of possible replacements. Suzuki was the preferred option this summer, even if Villa felt at one stage they had lost him to Paris Saint-Germain, just as they had missed out on Lucas Chevalier last summer.

Throughout, though, Villa believed Suzuki favoured a move to them over PSG. They decided to go all in, pursuing him regardless of what happened to Martinez. Villa agreed a €30million (£26m; $35m) fee, rising to €35m (£30m; $40.5m) with add-ons. As part of the agreement, €3m (£2.6m; $3.5m) went to Sint-Truiden, the club Suzuki spent a year at in the 2023-24 campaign before moving to Parma. 

“I realised how powerful he was with his distribution the first time I saw him throw,” recalls Rudel. “He can throw the ball almost 60 meters.

“In one of our first training sessions, we had a crossing drill, where Zion would catch the ball. I said, ‘Zion, I want to see how long you can throw’. So he caught it and I turned my back to see the pitch ahead. Then the ball went like an arrow. I turned back around and said ‘Zion, don’t kick the ball, throw it, like I said’. His English was not so good, so he just pointed to his right arm.

“I just thought, ‘What the f*** was that?’ I had never seen something like that. He was a monster — he was always in the gym, really professional. I told him he didn’t need to rent an apartment as he lived in the gym.”

During Villa’s 3-2 victory away to Club Brugge on Tuesday, Suzuki completed a similar action, claiming the ball before throwing to launch a counter. “What a throw!” shouted one Villa staff member, watching on from the stands, before applauding.

“He already had his technique when he came to Belgium,” says Rudel. “It’s such good quality that’s just talent. You can train it, but you can’t get on that high a level if you don’t have the natural technique and power. 

“I remember once we played away from home and we were driving back on the coach. But we were being held up by some hooligans fighting in front of us. So the manager, Thorsten Fink, said, ‘Zion, come here’. Zion went to the front of the bus where the coaches were sitting, and Fink said to him, ‘Zion, take your shirt off, go out and clean up that mess’. When you see him without a top on, it’s only muscles. It was only a joke, but because Zion is so respectful, he was looking, thinking, ‘Do I really have to do that?’”

“He would be in the gym doing squats after training,” recalls Ricardo Rodriguez, who served as Suzuki’s head coach for nearly two years at Urawa Red Diamonds in Japan. “He had all the weight plates on his shoulders and some players had to wait for them. He was 18 years old and was able to lift weights of more than 120 kilograms. It was so impressive.”

Multiple sources at former teams echo the same sentiments about Suzuki. At Villa staff are pleased by his attitude and how polite he is, whether that is thanking staff for food at lunch, tucking in his chair or coming out to speak to a Japanese reporter who has attended Suzuki’s two Premier League matches.

“He’s a really nice guy,” continues Rudel. “We would do a lot of video analysis and he always wanted to know a lot about his development and opponents. It was so pleasant to work with him because he was just so open-minded to learning.”

Suzuki’s career arc underlines how quick a learner he is. He would not be the first Japanese goalkeeper to play in the Champions League otherwise. The speed of his development is reflected in how, after spending only one season in Belgium, Sint-Truiden quadrupled their money by selling him to Parma.

It may be overlooked, considering how comfortable Suzuki appears when carrying out Unai Emery’s ploy of his backline baiting an opponent’s press, but at Parma, he was required to kick mostly long. Naturally, this played to his clear power-kicking strengths, which Emery is also leaning into.

When Villa decide to bypass an opponent’s press, Emery is using his two best hold-up outlets, John McGinn and Nicolas Jackson, in a two-v-two situation up front, with Suzuki kicking accurately to them.

His kicking accuracy means he can pick out Villa’s striker in different ways. Here against Hull, Suzuki drilled a low pass into Jackson’s feet.

“He had the power to distribute the ball very far from the goal,” says Rodriguez. “My philosophy was to use the goalkeeper as the first attacking player and with time, he was improving his decision process and his precision in long passes.

“He was good kicking long but now he has improved even more, combining the long, middle and short passes with the best decision.”

Generally, Parma went direct last season when faced with any semblance of pressure. Suzuki played 3.2 passes per game into the opponent’s penalty area (most were uncompleted), which was the highest among Serie A and Premier League goalkeepers, with Everton’s Jordan Pickford in second. This does indicate that, like Pickford, Suzuki is capable of getting huge distances on his passes.

Suzuki played the 13th-most long passes of any player in Serie A, contributing to his overall pass accuracy being down at 62 per cent. In comparison, Martinez, who was given far more scope to vary his kicking, held a 73.7 per cent success rate. 

Suzuki played just 0.6 line-breaking passes under pressure per 90 minutes. Yet his Parma team-mates ranked lowly too, suggesting this was a tactical instruction. By contrast, Martinez led the group with 2.2 line-breaking passes under pressure per 90, reflecting Villa’s appetite for baiting the press under Emery.

Now working with Emery, Suzuki has the license Martinez did. His 94.7 per cent pass completion against Hull was higher than he managed in any Serie A fixture last season. This was aided by Villa being a more accomplished possessional side and Hull rarely pressing.

Suzuki has already inherited certain Martinez mannerisms. One parallel is how both goalkeepers roll their foot on the ball, keeping it stationary and waiting for the opponent’s forward to press.

On Tuesday evening, Club Brugge attempted to shut off Suzuki’s passing lanes into his centre-backs by moving Carlos Forbs alongside Nicolo Tresoldi up front. But Suzuki’s two-footedness meant he was relaxed in playing between them, popping passes into the spare player in midfield. 

Isolating Suzuki’s line-breaking passes demonstrates a tendency to clip the ball out towards the left wing. This is pertinent considering Suzuki’s first seemingly ambitious pass of any kind for Villa came just three minutes in against Arsenal, lofting a diagonal ball out to left-back Ian Maatsen.

“Because he’s so ambitious, he sometimes wants it too much,” says Rudel. “So in games, he might force something or really want to be involved. What I taught him well is that you cannot force any actions as a goalkeeper. So the most difficult part is guiding him and keeping him slightly calmer — not needing to show in the first three games that he is the best goalkeeper in the world.

“But he has the potential to become one of the best goalkeepers in the world. He’ll get into the top five in the world soon.”

Suzuki will invariably be tested and experience dips in form as opponents prey on any small weakness. But Suzuki has the fundamentals and they are complemented by his remarkable distribution, his power, and an elite mindset. He is ready to compete at the highest level of the sport.