At Vallecas, Claudio Bravo broke Pedro María Artola’s record for the longest unbeaten start to a season (1977/78). Another clean sheet took the Chilean’s total run up to 630 minutes, i.e. seven entire games. No other top flight club in Europe has yet to let in a goal in this season, and the Barça keeper is now on course for further milestones.
Here are the records that Claudio Bravo has in his sights:
Barça league record: Miguel Reina. Bravo is 194 minutes away from the longest ever run for a Barça keeper in the league. Reina survived for 824 minutes without leaking a goal in the 1972/73 season, from games 14 to 23.
Overall Barça record: Víctor Valdés. Four years ago, the Catalan beat Reina’s record when considering all competitions. Valdés went for nine games without picking the ball out of the net in either La Liga or the Champions League, totalling 876 minutes.
Spanish league record: Abel Resino (Atlético Madrid). In 1990/91, Abel helped his team to consecutive shutouts from November 25 to March 17, no fewer than 1,275. Curiously, the man who ended the run was a young Luis Enrique, then playing for Sporting Gijón.
European record: Dany Verlinden (Bruges). The continental record was set by the Belgian stopper in 1990. He completed 1,390 unbeaten minutes.
World record: Geraldo ‘Mazaropi’ (Vasco da Gama). Bravo still has a long way to go before he can break one of the most astonishing records in world football. The Brazilian Geraldo Pereira de Matos Filho, better known as Mazaropi, and according to the IFFHS, lasted for 1,876 minutes without being scored against from May 18, 1977 right through to September 7, 1978. In total, that was twenty consecutive clean sheets in the Brazilian championship.
