Buffon, Casillas, Neuer, Kahn: Which goalkeeper has the most clean sheets?

There isn’t a single great football team throughout history that didn’t have a world-class goalkeeper.

While the role of shot-stopper is often a thankless one, it’s without question one of the most important on the field.

A top-quality goalkeeper improves a defence tenfold, which in turn makes the whole team a far more formidable proposition for an opponent.

Down the years, we’ve been blessed to watch some masters of the craft weave their magic between the posts.

Picking the very best of the bunch is, of course, near enough impossible and it’s a question we will not be attempting to answer today.

Instead, we’ll be looking over the 40 goalkeepers with the most clean sheets recorded for club and country, according to PopFoot.

Only one man has managed to surpass 500 and the percentage of games in which a clean sheet was kept is also available for each man.

40. David De Gea – 209 clean sheets (34%)

39. Andreas Isaksson – 210 clean sheets (36%)

38. Claudio Bravo – 211 clean sheets (37%)

37. Guillermo Ochoa – 217 clean sheets (28%)

36. Volkan Demirel – 218 clean sheets (37%)

35. Julio Cesar – 223 clean sheets (43%)

34. Yann Sommer – 228 clean sheets (33%)

33. Fernando Muslera – 229 clean sheets (34%)

32. Morgan de Sanctis – 229 clean sheets (36%)

31. Brad Friedel – 236 clean sheets (32%)

30. Ulrich Rame – 238 clean sheets (39%)

29. Dida – 238 clean sheets (44%)

28. Shay Given – 240 clean sheets (32%)

27. Steve Mandanda – 240 clean sheets (33%)

26. Jan Oblak – 242 clean sheets (47%)

25. Jussi Jaaskelainen – 245 clean sheets (31%)

24. Mark Schwarzer – 246 clean sheets (32%)

23. Kasper Schmeichel – 251 clean sheets (34%)

22. Gregory Coupet – 251 clean sheets (37%)

21. Joe Hart – 254 clean sheets (37%)

20. Tim Howard – 256 clean