Tottenham: Antonin Kinsky ready to challenge Guglielmo Vicario for Spurs No1 spot after £12.5m steal | OneFootball

New signing Kinsky was outstanding on debut against Liverpool and looks set for battle with Vicario

Antonin Kinsky’s Tottenham debut was watched with interest back at Slavia Prague by his former team-mates. And when he embraced his sister at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after earning a clean-sheet in Wednesday’s victory over Liverpool, she in tears of joy.

While the 1-0 Carabao Cup semi-final first-leg win was sealed by a goal from 18-year-old Lucas Bergvall, it took a wondrous late save from Kinsky to make sure of victory.

Darwin Nunez placed his face in his hands. He thought he had equalised with an improvised flick in stoppage time, before the right arm of Kinsky sprung out and pushed the shot wide.

Kinsky kept a clean sheet in Wednesday’s 1-0 Carabao Cup win over Liverpool

Getty Images

His £12.5million transfer fee from Slavia already looks a steal.

After Kinsky’s arrival was confirmed on Sunday, the official line from Tottenham and from Ange Postecoglou was that he has been signed to challenge Guglielmo Vicario for the No1 spot.

At the time, that felt perhaps a tad premature, but after his performance against Liverpool it seems clear Spurs have signed, in the words of their manager, “an outstanding footballer”.

While Vicario has earned plaudits for appearing the likely long-term successor to the great Hugo Lloris, teams have been known to target Vicario from set-pieces, firing in-swinging corners right onto the goal-line and using tall players to try to crowd out the Italian.

Vicario’s distribution is one of his selling points, yet Kinsky looked at least a match for him against Liverpool as he sprayed passes into his full-backs and fed the ball into unmarked team-mates in central defence and midfield. One long, raking pass into the feet of Heung-min Son rightly earned applause from many of the approving Spurs faithful.

Vicario is out with a foot fracture until the end of February or possibly even March

REUTERS

With Vicario out with a foot fracture until the end of February or possibly even March and new signing Kinsky moving above Fraser Forster and Brandon Austin in the pecking order, there is a real chance for Kinsky to make No1 spot his own and put real pressure on Vicario.

It showed real character that Kinsky should produce such a well-rounded display on debut after just two days of training at Spurs, and it is little wonder that chairman Daniel Levy and technical director Johan Lange committed to flying into Prague for two long days of negotiations with Slavia’s no-nonsense chairman Jaroslav Tvrdík.

“I got the sense when I spoke to him before we signed him that he had a bit about him - in terms of assuredness - that probably belied his years,” Postecoglou said after Kinsky’s clean-sheet against Liverpool.

“I threw him a mammoth task today to play against the best team arguably in the world at the moment in a big game: a semi-final. He just handled it awfully well.”