Grega Sorcan     20     Goalkeeper     ND Gorica     Slovenia

Skinny

Exceptionally agile young goalkeeper that seems to have been around for an absolute age.

Identified as being well above average for goalkeepers in his year group, Sorcan was signed by Chievo in 2014 as a raw seventeen year old. His journey into professional football had started much earlier, however, after making the substitutes bench for Triglav Kranj aged just 15.

Spending a year in Italy, Sorcan was an important player for Chievo’s youth team squad in the latter matches 2013-14 season as they won the Campionato Primavera Girone B ahead of Italy’s biggest clubs and their more lucratively backed academies. Impressive once more in the early part of the 2014-15 season, Sorcan opted to return to Slovenia for regular first team football at Gorica at the start of 2015.

Despite making the move in order to maintain a starting berth, the young goalkeeper had to bide his time until the call came. Replacing the Italian Alberto Gallinetta to make his Gorica debut against Krka in late April 2015, Gorcan did enough to justify his selection and retained his place for the remainder of the season as his side emerged from an annus horribilus to maintain their top flight status.

2016 has been…

Steady going. Particularly impressive in the early season exchanges during 2015-16 as Gorica hit top spot in the Prva Liga, Sorcan was unable to halt a mid-season slump which would see The Blue and Whites fall back to fourth, the position they would end the season in.

Throughout the year Sorcan has maintained his position as the first choice goalkeeper for the Nova Gorica outfit. Under Coach Miran Srebrnič the club have regained a sense of direction with a number of young players coming to the fore. The disastrous 2014-15 season has been largely scrubbed from memory and it’s certainly reasonable to suggest that Gorica’s improvement has occurred since a certain young goalkeeper arrived back in Slovenia.

What’s next?

The move to Italy perhaps came a little too early but certainly appears to have helped in this particular instance.  In a recent interview with a Slovenian daily newspaper, Sorcan was exceptionally complimentary about the coaching he had received at Chievo and a year spent away from home has grounded the youngster considerably.  Now visibly confident and a veteran of more than sixty matches in Slovenia’s top flight, Sorcan can begin to nail down the aspects of his game that need further attention. In terms of shot stopping you’ll do well to find a keeper that can move as quickly as Sorcan but full domination of his area, especially from set pieces, has yet to materialise.

That’s not a damning criticism; Sorcan is still just 20 and is developing very well at Gorica.  The rough edges to his game are likely to straighten themselves out in the medium term through experience and international recognition cannot be too far away. He’s unlikely to suddenly make the first team at Barcelona or Bayern in 2017, but you may find that Grega Sorcan becomes a lot more familiar to you very soon.

C     Keep on keeping on