Patrick Beach is a 22-year-old goalkeeper who plays for Melbourne City in the A-League. Beach became City’s first-choice keeper in the 24/25 season. He made some high-profile errors early in the season, but City stuck with him, and that has paid off in a big way. Beach has established himself as a very strong shot-stopper with some decent distribution. Beach’s strong performances earned him his first cap for the senior Australian national team in a friendly against Venezuela earlier this year.
Patrick Beach is tall, which is a good start for a goalkeeper, listed at 6’3″ (1.9 m). The first and most important question to ask of any goalkeeper is “can he stop the ball?” In Beach’s case, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’. Even with some early struggles last season, he significantly outperformed his xGA, and he has taken things to another level this season. Looking at the play behind those numbers, there are a couple of key things that Beach does that have led to his impressive stats. Firstly, he makes a lot of saves from close range and in 1v1 situations. Beach’s size makes him very good at closing down angles, and he has the reflexes to make saves from in tight. The other thing that leads to impressive stats is that he does not concede many long shots. His positioning is generally quite good, which puts him in a good position to handle long-range shots. He also has good handling, rarely parrying the ball back into danger.
Melbourne City plays a style that asks a lot of their goalkeeper in possession. As such, Beach is often well outside his box, splitting the centre-backs in build-up. His level of comfort with this set-up is middling. Beach is a bit clumsy on the ball, not particularly comfortable carrying it even a short distance, and very reluctant to use his weaker right foot. So, he certainly makes himself available to receive the ball a lot and gets a lot of touches for a goalkeeper, but I did find myself holding my breath whenever he received one of those passes. Beach is capable of striking the ball long distances, but the accuracy of his long passing was not very good in the games I watched (though, looking at the stats, his success rate is fairly high, so maybe I’m letting a few notable bad moments colour my overall perception). His consistency also leaves something to be desired; there were more than a few attempts at long passes that just went straight out of play in the games I watched. Beach showed some impressive throwing ability in the games I watched, able to play the ball to teammates near the halfway line. However, the consistency of these throws was a bit sporadic. He had a couple of throws directly intercepted in the games I watched. Still, if he can improve the consistency of his throws, that would be a major plus.
Beach looks like someone who will take a step up from the A-League sooner rather than later. Although he does a lot of ball playing, I think his actual on-ball ability will probably prevent him from reaching a truly elite level. But his shot-stopping is really good, and that is, at the end of the day, the job. So I think he could play somewhere in the 10-15 range of European leagues.
Target Scouting 