The bargain £5m Man Utd swoop that could solve major Erik ten Hag problem for years to come

You would be forgiven for not having the slightest clue as to who Zion Suzuki was prior to the beginning of this week. I certainly know I didn’t. Here we have a young goalkeeper, barely out of his teens, with a name like an anime protagonist and the wingspan of a fighter jet. Most of the footage circulating on social media shows him casually tossing balls half the length of near-deserted stadiums, and shutting out relatively tame efforts from spindly youth players. Now, however, he appears to be on the cusp of a transfer to one of the biggest clubs in world football.

Manchester United need a goalkeeper this summer. Hell, they might even need two. David de Gea’s contract situation continues to mystify with all of the melodramatic complexity of a Dan Brown novel (you can almost hear Martin Tyler now, ‘De Gea, Da Vinci Code’ etc etc), while Dean Henderson has been a United player in name only ever since he was shipped out to Nottingham Forest like a Cumbrian Little Red Riding Hood last summer.

If both depart, and there is a good possibility that they do, then the only senior goalkeeper left on the books at Old Trafford will be Tom Heaton, and United will not only need to draft in a new first choice, but a decent understudy too. According to various speculative musings, Andre Onana remains their preferred option for the number one jersey, but in recent days, Suzuki has emerged as an intriguing prospective deputy.

So, what do we know about the upstart? Well, he was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in the United States to a Ghanian father and a Japanese mother. As such, he could technically represent any of those three nations at international level, although it is Japan that he has featured for frequently as a youth having grown up largely in the Saitama Prefecture of the Kanto region on Honshu. Geography lesson over.

At 16, he made his debut for current club Urawa Red Diamonds, and kept three consecutive clean sheets in his first three matches. Since then, however, Urawa have taken a fairly protective stance over their prodigious asset, and he has featured in just eight J-League matches since 2018. Still, his reputation has grown almost exponentially, and has been aided no end by his regular inclusion in a squad that won the AFC Champions League last year.

But really, the most exciting thing about Suzuki is the way that he plays. One of the first things you notice across his various highlight reels is the distribution. Unwaveringly calm with the ball at his feet, the stopper possesses a near-pinpoint accuracy in his passing range, both over short and longer distances. Whether he is cleaving a forward line with an intelligent daisycutter, or trebucheting a diagonal into the path of a waiting winger, Suzuki seems to have a firm grasp on that most thoroughly modern of goalkeeping traits; confidence with the ball at his feet.

We know how highly Erik ten Hag values the capability to build from the back. We know the significance that he places on it, and we have witnessed on multiple occasions the extent to which De Gea has struggled to meet his requisite standards in that regard. Suzuki, like Onana, would bring with him no such concerns. He is a player who already boasts a promising foundation, but who also evidently has the potential to be sculpted into a tailormade Ten Hag linchpin.

And then there is his shotstopping prowess. The nature of those compilations that are cluttering timelines all across Football Twitter^TM - exacerbated by the scarcity of professional minutes that Suzuki has registered - means that there is a lot of filler content; routine stops that do little to illuminate exactly how special the towering stopper is. They do tell us some things, though.

For one, his positioning is impeccable. Any save can be made into an easy save if you’re stood directly in the path of the shot, and Suzuki’s anticipation and understanding of an attacker’s intent is clearly, and admirably, steadfast. He makes things look simpler than they are, and while it may not always thrill, it does work.

Then there is his handling. Rarely does Suzuki appear to spill anything, and rarely does he elect to punch or parry. Instead, his favoured method is often to catch and collect - his satellite dish paws absorbing and cushioning like a cube of jelly or a stunt double’s crash mat.

And that also ties into the way that he moves. It may sound superficial, and perhaps a little irrelevant, but Suzuki looks like an elite goalkeeper. He constantly seems assured and in control, diving and shifting his feet with solidity and grace, and commanding aerial duels with a conviction that belies his age. At a certain level, that should be the norm, but for a player as young as he is, it’s a real hallmark of his natural aptitude.

Make no mistake either, these eulogising videos - always scored by either the corniest Eurodance or the most obnoxious lo-fi hip hop beat you’ve ever heard, by the way - are peppered with moments of pure brilliance. There are agile double saves in which Suzuki prevents certain goals that he has no legitimate right to. There are courageous one-on-ones where he makes himself impossibly big and bluntly impassable. There are absurd reflex reactions in which shots ricochet through forests of shins and the young keeper is forced to hurl his hulking frame in improbable directions at the flash of a synapse. Granted, there isn’t a great deal of evidence to sift through, but based on what we do have at our disposal, this kid is no joke.

According to sources in Japan, United could be in the process of putting together a £5 million bid for Suzuki. In the grand scheme of the Red Devils’ vast finances, that may feel like a raindrop in a reservoir, although it is worth pointing out that it would be a record fee for a J-League club to receive, eclipsing the the £4.5 million that Celtic paid Vissel Kobe for Kyogo Furuhashi a couple of years ago. But however meagre a deal for Suzuki might feel right now, it could be made to feel infinitely more so if he goes on to fulfil his full and obvious potential.