Meet Vicente Reyes
An overdue introduction to our new man between the sticks
In case anyone’s not aware, there’s been quite a big international tournament going on. As a result, our updates on incoming U’s signings - which feature views and insights from fans of their former clubs - have been somewhat slower than ideal. But now that the English curse of lifelong footballing disappointment has been maintained for another couple of years, let’s catch up on what we’ve missed, starting with our new on-loan ‘keeper.
Vicente Reyes arrives as the fourth signing of the Garry Monk era, following the new faces of Kell Watts and Shayne Lavery, and the return of James Gibbons on a permanent deal. Having lost Will Mannion to Charlton following the expiry of his contract this summer, it’s no big surprise that the U’s recruitment team moved quickly to bring in someone to step into his shoes (or gloves, more accurately). Whether Reyes’ gloves will be those of United’s number 1 for the season, as Mannion’s were for the vast majority of Monk’s time towards the end of last season, we will come to later on in this piece.
Firstly, who is Vicente Reyes? He’s a 20-year-old, 6 foot 4 Chilean keeper, on loan from Norwich City for the 2024/25 season. He has probably one of the more interesting career paths a player has taken to lead them to CB5. Born in South Carolina, he joined Atlanta United’s youth academy in 2016. Having gone on to make 31 appearances for Atlanta’s second team, he never made a first team appearance before being plucked across the pond by Norwich City - an interesting piece of scouting from the Canaries.
Aside from a four-game loan at Braintree in 2023, his first real taste of professional football in England was later that season with a 16-game spell at the club propping up the whole EFL at the bottom of League Two, Forest Green Rovers. It’s worth noting that loan deal was initially a seven day emergency loan, which was eventually extended until the end of the 23/24 season.
Despite playing for a club that would eventually be relegated and who conceded 78 goals throughout the season, Reyes’ time there is viewed very fondly.
Alfie Ryan from Gloucester Live gave us his view:
Vinny was class with us for the time he was with Forest Green. He made 16 appearances for the Rovers and kept five clean sheets which I thoroughly believe is impressive given the circumstances of our last two seasons in the Football League.
Our fans absolutely loved him in the short time he was with the club. In terms of strengths, his shot stopping ability was second to none. He wasn’t scared to come for a cross at all, and his distribution was pretty good also. He had some seriously good highlights in games against Bradford, Walsall and Crewe last year and definitely won us a good few points towards the tail end of a poor season.
In a season with such few highs, the three surprise victories FGR managed to pick up that Alfie mentioned all include clean sheets, with the Walsall game also featuring a penalty save late on to keep the score at 1-0. In his 16 games for FGR, he recorded a Clean Sheet Percentage of 31.3% (8th best in the league), Save Percentage of 70.6% (also 8th best) and Goals Against per 90mins of 1.31 (11th best in the league). Despite a smaller sample size than the majority of the division’s keepers, it’s clear that his performances in goal had a significant impact on FGR’s faint late season hopes of survival, and he was vastly outperforming the statistical level of his teammates.
So despite such a small career sample size with which to be able to assess Reyes, his time at Forest Green is at the very least promising. The question that remains is what sort of role he’ll have at United.
Given such a promising spell on loan it would seem strange if Norwich were sending him on loan to us with the knowledge he’ll spend the entire season playing second fiddle to Jack Stevens and twiddling his thumbs on the bench. Rather than last summer, where despite some murmurings from fans it was clear Stevens would start as number 1, this feels more reminiscent of the situation with Dimi Mitov and Callum Burton from our League 2 promotion season. Mitov obviously ended up establishing himself as the outright first choice, but there was a period where it was almost a 50/50 split between who you would prefer in net.
At this stage, it seems people are expecting Stevens to start in goal - despite all the understandable trepidations, he is after all still literally wearing the number 1 shirt. But I would expect Reyes to be ready to take his place given any slip up, pushing him all the way. He’ll play in all the cups to get game time and show Monk what he can do. Whether he can claim the gloves for himself remains to be seen.