Aston Villa have announced the acquisitions of goalkeeper Zion Suzuki and left-back Matteo Ruggeri.
Japan international Suzuki transfers to Villa Park from the Italian club Parma for a fee around £30m.
Italian full-back Ruggeri signs with Villa for £17m from La Liga’s Atletico Madrid.
Suzuki, 23, comes on board even though Emi Martinez’s transfer to Juventus fell through over the weekend, as the two clubs couldn’t settle on a fee.
Martinez, a key player in Villa’s Europa League win in May and a champion in the 2022 World Cup with Argentina, now has an unclear future following his unsuccessful transfer to Juve.
Villa considers 23-year-old Suzuki their long-term first-choice goalkeeper, possibly for the next ten years.
He spent two years at Parma, making 59 appearances for the Serie A team and assisting them in achieving a 13th-place finish last season.
Ruggeri, 24, is set to replace Lucas Digne, who joined European champions Paris St-Germain on August 9, and has not yet earned a senior cap for Italy.
A Europa League champion with Atalanta in 2024, Ruggeri played more than 100 matches for the Serie A club before transferring to Atletico last summer.
Both may debut in the Premier League opener at Brighton on Sunday.
Suzuki’s former coach at Sint-Truiden in Belgium, Dennis Rudel, gives an intriguing description of Villa’s new goalkeeper.
“We played in Anderlecht, and after the game we went out to the bus, and there was a fight with hooligans,” he tells BBC Sport.
“The head coach called for Zion: ‘Come here, get out of the bus and clear the situation.’
“It was a joke, but you have a picture of Asterix and Obelix, and everything is flying away. You have never seen a goalkeeper or a player like that.”
The analogy to Asterix, the animated figure who acquires extraordinary power from a magical potion, is revealing, and Rudel thinks Villa has obtained a one-of-a-kind player.
“I saw his power immediately. To show your strength in the game, you have to let the tiger out on the pitch, let the beast out. He is so powerful; I have never seen a goalkeeper like it,” said Rudel, who worked with Suzuki when he was on loan at Sint-Truiden in 2023-24.
“He has such big hands and is powerful—when he can reach the ball, it will be 90-95% a save; maybe other keepers touch the ball, but it goes in. With him it is something really special.
“After the first two weeks of working with him, I said to him, ‘You don’t need your apartment; you live in the gym.'”
Rudel also applauded Suzuki’s distribution, with both his arms and feet, and believes his former player can become one of the world’s best.
“It’s possible because if he stays healthy and with his physical strength, there is no one better in the world in terms of dynamic jumping power, throws, or kicking the ball,” said the former Union Berlin coach.
“When I watched him at the World Cup, his biggest strength was that he was mentally clear—the focus on the game or the training sessions was so good. He is always prepared, really disciplined.
“When I see how he always adapts so quickly over the last four years, I’m convinced he can play at that [Premier League] level.
“There are big footsteps from Martinez [to follow], you get measured and compared to Martinez. It would be the same at Bayern Munich with the new Manuel Neuer—Jonas Urbig, who is starting to replace him; you get compared to the former player.
“He’s aiming to show he can be one of the best. He was immediately one of the top four or five goalkeepers in Serie A.
“As a person and a player, he is a role model for how you should behave. I don’t see any weakness in him.”
Rudel played a crucial role in introducing Suzuki to Europe after visiting Japan in 2020 for coaching clinics and encountering Suzuki’s coach at Urawa Red Diamonds, who pointed out the goalkeeper to him.
Sint-Truiden, owned by the Japanese electronics and internet firm DMM.com, has previously had Liverpool’s Wataru Endo and Crystal Palace players Takehiro Tomiyasu and Daichi Kamada on their roster.
That facilitated Suzuki’s path to Belgium, and a year afterward he signed with Parma for £8m.
“[In 2023] we were looking for a new goalkeeper and had a couple of on the list but all of a sudden the club said we had an option to get Zion. I said to the sporting director ‘forget the list – if we can get him, get him’,” added Rudel.
“His level went up really quickly, he is very ambitious, he wanted to learn a lot, he asked a lot. We did a lot of video analysis, and I can remember how nice it was to work with him. It was a shame it was only one season.”
