'One of the best in the Championship': The Portsmouth bargain buy who is continuing to exceed expectations
The Austrian joined Pompey from BW Linz in August 2024
Joe Prodomo is convinced Nicolas Schmid has already established himself as one of the Championship’s finest keepers.
And Pompey’s goalkeeping coach admits the Austrian stopper also exceeded all expectations in last year’s maiden English campaign.
Prodomo was instrumental in identifying the relative unknown, who arrived at Fratton Park in August 2024 for an undisclosed fee from BW Linz to provide competition to Will Norris and Jordan Archer.
Just nine matches into the 2024-25, Schmid had dislodged League One title-winner Norris and subsequently established himself as one of Pompey’s best performers in their successful battle against relegation.
Now the 28-year-old has entered his second Championship season and was once again impressive in last weekend’s opening-day victory at Oxford United.
And Prodomo is understandably a huge fan of Schmid’s talents.
Portsmouth coach: Schmid has been pretty much faultless
He told The News: ‘I genuinely think Nico is one of the best goalkeepers in the league - and his performances and the data will back that up.
‘He was one of the best-performing goalkeepers in the division last year, pretty much faultless when he came into the team last year.
‘Since he came in against Oxford, he went from strength to strength. I cannot overstake how important I think he was for the team, especially at the back end of the season when you think of the importance of the Leeds performance, the save in the Watford game.
‘He had some big moments, with others such as the Coventry game when Norman Bassette ran through with a one-v-one and could have made it 2-0, that was a massive stop.
‘Obviously we had a lot of confidence in Nico’s ability, otherwise we wouldn’t have looked to bring him in. We always felt he was a goalkeeper who could become really important to us.
‘But for the opportunity to come so quickly - eight games in - was probably a surprise in the first place because Will was in possession of the shirt.
‘So for someone with all those factors to come into a new country - probably in the top-eight leagues in Europe - and be such an important player as quickly, did exceed our expectations.
‘Everyone can see the massive role he played in us achieving what we wanted to do and he’s such a good character, has a really good sense of humour, is great with other goalies and is great around the ground.
‘Nico is everything you would want your number one goalkeeper to be in terms of how he treats people, how he goes about his work and, the other important bit, is being a really good performer.
‘We had immense confidence in what he could offer - and he definitely surpassed that.’
Speaking to The News, he said: ‘There’s a part of me that can just sit here and take all the credit for Nico, but Joe Prodomo, our goalie coach, is one of the biggest badgers in football. He knows everyone.’
Former Bournemouth Academy goalkeeping coach Prodomo, though, laughed at the suggest.
‘Portsmouth owners deserve a lot of credit’
Prodomo added: ‘I think that’s just good leadership from Rich! There's so many parts to it, in terms of the majority of the legwork, in terms of watching hours and hours of footage and streamlining that into the important information for those people around you.
‘I guess I did a lot of legwork with that, but, ultimately, I don’t think it was ever really in our plans to spend money on another goalkeeper, we knew Will was going to start the season.
‘But that is where people like Rich, Andy Cullen, the owners and Tony Brown deserve a lot of credit.
‘When we were going through it from a footballing opinion, myself, Brad (Wall), John and Rich all felt Nico was a really good Championship goalkeeper in the making and that the kind of numbers potentially talked about made it a really good value for what we were getting.
‘But, ultimately, none of that is possible if the owners and people running the club don’t make it possible.’
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