Patience pays off for Ryan with La Liga switch
Maty Ryan knows better than most that there are no guarantees in club football but at La Liga side Levante, the Socceroo skipper feels landed in a place where he'll be afforded every chance to play.
LOS ANGELES, California — Maty Ryan knows better than most that there are no guarantees in club football, be it in finding your next opportunity or actually playing once you do. But after landing with La Liga side Levante in the final week of the European transfer window, the Socceroo skipper is confident he’s landed somewhere where he’ll be afforded every chance to play at the highest level.
Ryan experienced the highs and lows of goalkeeping life during the 2024-25 campaign, marooned behind Mile Svilar on the bench of Serie A outfit Roma during its first half before securing a midseason move to Ligue 1 side Lens and instantly slotting in as a constant starter. These divergent existences at clubland bled into his national team fortunes, too, the veteran briefly losing his place as the Socceroos’ number one to Joe Gauci at the start of Tony Popovic’s tenure, only to subsequently win it back and be between the posts as World Cup qualification was secured.
Lens’ decision to move ahead with French youth international Robin Risser as their starter for 2025-26, however, left Ryan standing at the crossroads again. It was an intersection he remained rooted to into the start of the new season, links with clubs across Denmark, the United States, England, and the Netherlands coming and going without his signing.
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Eventually, however, with just days to go until the window shut, the 33-year-old inked a deal at the Estadio Ciudad de Valencia with newly promoted La Liga side Levante – Ryan having previously played on the Spanish coast with Valencia.
Coming as late in proceedings as it did, that move played a key role in his absence from the Socceroo squad that played New Zealand in the Soccer Ashes during the September international window. But now, with his place in Julián Calero’s side established, he’s returned to the squad for games against Canada and the United States during the October window.
“It took longer than I think every footballer would have hoped, signing in the last week of August,” the keeper reflected on Monday. “But I backed myself. I was confident I could play at the highest level and find a good fit for me.
“For whatever reason, things didn’t line up until that last week. I backed myself to wait for what I felt was going to be the perfect thing. And I guess in this regard, patience prevailed at the end of the day in terms of the opportunity that I got. Looking back on the whole window, Levante was probably the best option that I had out of the ones that I was entertaining.
“I’m really pleased to be there and really pleased to have gone there and started playing straight away as well. Now enjoying the challenges of playing at the highest level, playing against some of the best players and teams in the world. We’ve had a little bit of success so far. And there’s no better feeling than winning games of football, playing at the highest level and against those great players.
“I’m going to do my best to keep warranting selection and hopefully contributing to us picking up plenty of points this season -- most importantly, the amount of points needed for us to survive this season and be around for La Liga next season.”
Ryan has played in six games since landing in Spain, picking up two wins (featuring clean sheets against Girona and Real Oviedo), two draws, and two defeats in the process. The eight points gained have proven enough to drag Levante, who were expected to battle to avoid the drop at season’s commencement, up into 13th on the table.
But while he may have instantly been tapped as a starter by Calero, Ryan said that he hadn’t arrived in the Spanish top-flight with any guarantees that he would be the starter – only the commitment that he would be given every chance to prove his worth and earn the right to be the number one.
And with the chance to line up against the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona on offer, the former coming to town and downing Levante 4-1 in late September, that was all he needed to hear.
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“The one consistent goal I’ve had, since I had my first taste of it, was playing at the highest level that I could,” Ryan explained. “The way transfers can happen, it can all play out in a different array of ways... it’s becoming less and less common that a manager will give you direct dialogue in saying that you’re going to go in and be the number one.
“It’s becoming more and more consistent in the fact that managers take the approach of telling you that they want you here at the club; that they can’t guarantee you first team football, but if you come in and apply yourself and work hard, they’ve been shown to reward players that come in and do exactly that.
“I love a manager that takes that approach, that has no favourites; when addressing the team, talking about ‘The striker needs to do this. The midfielder does this. The goalkeeper does this,’ instead of using certain players’ names. Because I think [the latter] opens up scenarios where perhaps a player who is playing might get too relaxed in knowing that he’s going to play. And, on the other hand, a player that isn’t playing and he’s vying to try and play may think ‘I’m not going to play now -- he’s obviously saying his name, then why do I try?’
“Thankfully, that’s kind of never been a situation here in the national team, but moreso [Ryan’s] experiences in club environments and whatnot. The managers that I’ve worked with, that have had that approach where they don’t have any favorites, they make it known to the team that no player should assume that they’re going to play every single minute of every single game and that first and foremost, you need to warrant the right to start a match by proving that you deserve to play each and every day in training. I think that’s from a mentality perspective and a team environment, the right way to go about it.
“In coming to Levante, the manager was not telling me I was going to be the number one but they were saying that they were looking for a goalkeeper with a bit of experience... and I tried to do as much as I could to see what information I could get [about] my chances of coming in and playing regularly from the get go. I came to the decision that I wanted to go there.
“There’s a bit of an aspect of rolling the dice a little bit, but I’ve backed myself and it’s paying off to now. But it’s always a changing situation. I’ve got to go out there and perform every game and every moment that I’m out there, every training session, otherwise I open up the door to perhaps losing that position. That’s what it requires. That’s what a player’s responsibility is: it’s a player’s responsibility to not give the manager a reason not to play them. That’s the approach that I try and take.”
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