Seventeen months separate Illan Meslier and Elia Caprile. That small fact goes some way to underlining the mountain the latter was having to climb at Leeds United.
The Italian goalkeeper was signed by Victor Orta five months after the Frenchman and would be barely five weeks into his West Yorkshire stay when Meslier became number one. Caprile was a third-choice goalkeeper signed in January 2020 and someone Leeds brought in with high hopes for how he would flourish.
Like many under-23 acquisitions, there is no guarantee for how a player will develop, but if you see enough in their limited track record to turn your head, and they are available, it’s worth the limited financial gamble. After a season away in Italy’s third tier, the latest reports would suggest Caprile may stay in his homeland on a permanent basis.
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Second-tier Bari are being touted as front-runners in taking the 20-year-old from Elland Road. Leeds look well-stocked in that department and Caprile may well see this as a better pathway to more senior football.
Meslier is already leaps and bounds ahead of Caprile in development and as a youngster himself it’s hard to see the Italian supplanting him anytime soon. Kristoffer Klaesson and Dani van den Heuvel are also young stoppers already in reserve.
Should Leeds pursue an experienced back-up for Meslier, it would only add another obstacle for Caprile to clear. An exit makes sense and could draw a line under a move Orta saw as a brave one by the Italian youngster in 2020.
Speaking to LeedsLive about the stopper’s arrival just after that January arrival, Orta said goalkeeping coach Marcos Abad had played a role in scouting Caprile. The director of football was impressed by the teenager’s decision to turn down terms with Chievo, the easy choice, to move to England and a new culture.
“It’s a difficult approach for young goalkeepers in the internal market because the quality is really protected by contracts,” said Orta. “We start to evaluate 20 goalkeepers.
“I put the availability because it’s difficult, and Marcos Abad makes a scouting difference because he has a more professional eye. Then we evaluate these 20 names, we leave in three main names.
“One of these we had the bad luck as they start to play straight away with his first team at 18. Then they all seemed impossible.
“Elia came up and one of the things I feel really happy about is the player took the challenge of coming to England. He had two options to go to Italy.
“Normally he would take the option to renew the contract in Chievo and start to play in the first team. I don’t know the reason, but it’s proof, having this signing, he took the most challenging option.
“Come to England, come to Leeds, all different around him. You need to have character to have a first professional contract from your club and you still say you want to go to Leeds.”
Caprile would leave Leeds without any first-team appearances. He played in the Football League Trophy with the under-21s and got as far as the bench in the Premier League at West Ham United in March 2021.
