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Ewen Jaouen: The Next Giant in Goalkeeping
Ewen Jaouen grew up watching the Bundesliga on television, dreaming about the great German keepers. His own path, though, always seemed likely to bend in a different direction.
“With your characteristics, you could be a goalkeeper in England one day,” he was once told.
The man who said it was Christophe Lollichon, a coach who has seen more than enough elite goalkeepers to trust his instincts. Those words now land with a thud of inevitability. Jaouen has completed his medical and is on the brink of joining Newcastle United, a 20-year-old who has never played in the top flight commanding a fee of about £18.5m.
From Stade de Reims in Ligue 2 to the Premier League. From relative anonymity to the glare of St James’ Park. It is a leap, not a step.
A giant with raw edges
Newcastle are not paying for a finished article. They are paying for a frame, a mindset, and a ceiling that remains stubbornly out of sight.
At 6ft 6in, Jaouen cuts the kind of figure English crowds notice immediately. He dominates his box, likes to come for crosses, and is comfortable enough with the ball at his feet to fit the “modern ’keeper” tag he gives himself. He can pull off the big, showreel saves. He also has plenty to polish.
That mix is exactly what intrigues those who have worked with him.
Lollichon, Chelsea’s former head of goalkeeping, has shared training pitches with Petr Cech, Thibaut Courtois and Edouard Mendy. He knows what the early stages of a top career can look like. He also knows Jaouen up close, having coached him during a loan spell at USL Dunkerque in 2024-25.
“Ewen is only 20 so, if the context is positive, I don’t know the limit for him,” he told BBC Sport. Coming from a man who once watched a teenage Courtois and saw the outline of a future giant, that line carries weight.
He even draws that parallel himself. Jaouen’s profile, he says, reminds him of Courtois when he first saw the Belgian at 17.
Clean sheets and growing pains
The numbers from last season explain why Newcastle and others across Europe started circling. Not since Mendy has a goalkeeper kept as many clean sheets in a single league campaign for Stade de Reims. Jaouen finished with 15 shutouts, a remarkable haul for a young keeper in Ligue 2.
It was not a smooth, linear rise.
At Dunkerque, a couple of errors cost him his place to the more experienced Adrian Ortola, preferred for his ability to play out from the back. Jaouen was angry, frustrated, wounded. Then he went to work.
He accepted the challenge, listened, and started to adapt. Lollichon recalls a young goalkeeper who was “a little bit scared” about changes to his game and his positioning at crosses. That fear did not last. The improvements came quickly, and they came under pressure.
Jaouen shone in the French Cup, helping drive Dunkerque to the semi-finals in 2024-25. Against top-tier opposition, he showed what his frame and temperament could do.
Lille, David and a defining shootout
The last-16 tie against Lille became a snapshot of what Newcastle are buying.
In normal time, Jonathan David went through one-on-one. The script in those moments is usually familiar: the striker waits, the keeper flinches, the finish rolls in. Jaouen refused to play his part. He stayed tall, delayed, never offered the obvious solution. David tried to chip him. The young Frenchman remained upright and snuffed out the chance.
The pressure cranked up again in the shootout. This time, Jaouen wasn’t just the man on the line. He was also the man on the walk.
Dunkerque made him their sixth taker. No hesitation, no fuss. As he stepped up, former Lille goalkeeper Vito Mannone tried to control the moment, to dictate the timing. Jaouen took it back. Composed, clear in his head, he struck what Lollichon called an “unbelievable” penalty, stunning a far more experienced opponent who had expected nerves from the “young guy in front of him”.
Two scenes, one thread: a keeper who does not shrink when the air gets thin.
“He’s very solid and these two situations show something very important,” said Lollichon. Calm under intense pressure. Clarity when the stakes rise.
Newcastle’s plan: protect the giant
Newcastle know all of this. They have watched the tape, crunched the data, spoken to those who know him. They also know the Premier League can chew up young goalkeepers who are thrown in too early.
Lollichon is clear on that point. Launching Jaouen straight into the starting XI would be “a little bit dangerous”. The expectation is that Newcastle will shield him at first, allowing him to adjust to the speed and physicality of English football.
“I think the objective of Newcastle is for him to observe the new level in his first season,” he said. “Ewen was a number one in Ligue 2 last season, but the Premier League is the top. The intensity, the quality of the players, is a big change but Ewen has this ability to observe and adapt very quickly.”
Around the training ground, they will find a serious, almost understated character.
“He’s very professional. He’s not a guy who speaks all the time – he’s very discreet,” Lollichon added. “What I’m saying is a little bit old-fashioned, but he needs to feel love around him.”
Give him that, he believes, and the rest can follow.
From Reims to the roar of England
For now, the story is still at the beginning. A France Under-21s international with 15 clean sheets in Ligue 2, a giant frame, sharp reflexes and obvious flaws to iron out is swapping the quiet of Reims for the raw noise of Newcastle.
He arrives as a project, not a saviour. A goalkeeper who has already been dropped, doubted and challenged, and who responded by learning rather than sulking.
The Premier League will ask harsher questions than anything he has faced so far. The ball will move quicker, the bodies will be bigger, the scrutiny relentless. But if Newcastle get the context right, as Lollichon puts it, how far can a 6ft 6in “modern ’keeper” with this mentality really go?
