Why did Newcastle sign a contract with a "giant" from the French second division?

 Ewen Jaouen had always followed the Bundesliga from afar, but it seemed that his future would lie elsewhere. "You have such skills that one day you could be a goalkeeper in England," he once heard. These words from French goalkeeping coach Christophe Lollichon turned out to be prophetic. Jaouen has passed medical tests and will soon complete his transfer to Newcastle United. The club is ready to pay around £18.5 million for a goalkeeper who has never played at top league level before. This is a huge step up from Stade de Reims in Ligue 2, and he will certainly need time to adapt, but his talent is undeniable. Few realize that this is also the opinion of other clubs. Chelsea's former head of goalkeeper training, Christophe Lollichon, has worked closely over the years with names such as Petr Cech, Thibaut Courtois and Edouard Mendy. "Ewen is only 20 years old, so if the context is positive, I don't know the limits of his possibilities," Lollichon told BBC Sport. That's high praise, but there was a reason why clubs across Europe monitored Jaouen's progress last season. No Stade de Reims goalkeeper has kept as many clean sheets in a single league season as Jaouen did last year (15). The Frenchman still needs a lot of work, but the French youth international has all the raw attributes to continue to develop. He is 198 cm tall, is proactive in his penalty area, has good footwork, can make key interventions and has a lot of room for improvement in key aspects. Lollichon, who is still in contact with Jaouen's representatives, compares his profile to that of Courtois when he made his professional debut at the age of 17. However, he has no intention of throwing it straight into the deep end, which would be, as he says, "a bit dangerous." "I think Newcastle's goal is for him to see a new level of play in his first season. Ewen was number one in Ligue 2 last season, but the Premier League is a completely different story. The intensity, the quality of the players is a huge change, but Ewen has the ability to observe and adapt very quickly. He is very professional. He is not a boy who talks a lot - he is rather discreet. What I am saying may sound a bit old-fashioned, but he must feel the love for himself from those around him. This is a player who over time he's come a long way in a relatively short period of time. It's easy to get frustrated when you're a youth goalkeeper who's doing well and then you get loaned to a club where you're a substitute. This was Ewen's situation at Dunkirk, where at the beginning of the season he was a more experienced goalkeeper and showed more of his foot skills his player was doing well during his loan, he noticed that Ewen, for example, was hesitant in his movements. And here we are dealing with the second aspect that Lollichon mentioned, which was self-confidenceadvancing to the next round, he himself took the eleventh penalty kick, being the last player of his team. Everyone was shocked that such a young goalkeeper, who had recently been a substitute, had such self-confidence to take the most important penalty in such an important match. This shows that Ewen learns and absorbs different experiences very quickly. This season at Dunkirk, where he played on loan, was very instructive for him, and he went through a process very quickly that could have taken much longer.