Antonin Kinsky has lived in London for just over a week but he has already been treated to the full Tottenham Hotspur experience.
The 21-year-old joined Spurs from Slavia Prague on 5 January in a deal worth £12.5m and has already played for his new club twice due to the current goalkeeper shortage.
Last Wednesday, Kinsky starred in a rousing Carabao Cup semi-final win over Liverpool which showcased the very best of an exciting young team. He kept a clean sheet and made six saves to keep the Premier League leaders at bay. It was sink or swim for the Czech rookie; his success was akin to diving in off the 10m board and going straight into the butterfly.
Then on Sunday, he was one of a few to emerge with any credit from a nail-biting win over non-league Tamworth in the FA Cup that showed Ange Postecoglou’s side at their very worst. His save in the sixth minute of added time stopped Spurs from suffering the most embarrassing defeat in the club’s 142-year history.
This past week is a perfect microcosm of Spurs’ season: outstanding one game and abject the next.
Since the end of October, they have six wins out of 18 in regulation time. Those victories were against Manchester City (twice), Aston Villa, Manchester United, Southampton and Liverpool.
That tendency to raise their game against esteemed opponents adds another thick layer of intrigue to Wednesday’s north London derby against Arsenal at the Emirates.
Although Guglielmo Vicario is back in training after sustaining a fractured ankle in November, Kinsky is expected to start and make his Premier League debut in one of the most feverish fixtures in the top flight.
The Gunners, reeling from a damaging week, will naturally try to unnerve and unsettle Kinsky, especially from inswinging corners to the back post which have become a staple of their attacking arsenal and troubled more established keepers than Spurs’ No 31.
It’s a huge occasion and one that Kinsky’s former teammates and coaches believe he will relish.
“When we met in the locker room he seemed very confident to me but he was very nice and friendly,” says Viktor Budinsky, who rivalled Kinsky for the No 1 position at FK Pardubice where Slavia had loaned him out last season.
“He is incredibly strong mentally and that is important in today’s football. I believe that he will prepare for the match as best he can and show his best.”
Kinsky made his first-team debut with Dukla Prague at just 17 and it took only seven appearances in their colours to attract the attentions of Slavia.
His standout attributes at the time were “healthy self-confidence and hard work,” according to Günter Bittengel, Dukla’s academy manager.
“For his early age, he was very confident and calm in matches,” he says. “He wasn’t afraid of difficult situations in the build-up play and in his passing game. You could clearly see his potential and talent.”
The speed at which Spurs moved to complete the deal early in the transfer window suggests the club was confident he could make an immediate impact.
Last week, Kinsky’s agent Viktor Kolar revealed that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy and technical director Johan Lange flew into Prague on New Year’s Day for two days of negotiations to thrash out terms with the Czech league leaders.
“The negotiations were intense, stretching late into the night. But it worked, and I’m happy about that,” he told Flashscore.
The Czech Republic U21 international seems like the perfect profile of player for a club rebuilding around youth.
He is both a big prospect and a big personality, like fellow recent recruits Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall.
And similarly to Gray, Kinsky has a footballing family name to uphold.
Kinsky’s father Antonin Snr, was one of the best Czech goalkeepers of his generation, a league and cup winner with Slovan Liberec and a six-time senior international. He was selected for both Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup.
Kinsky Snr has inevitably been a major influence on his son’s career. Although the ball-playing demands on keepers have evolved dramatically since he retired in 2010, Kinsky Snr recognised that the role in the modern game was changing.
According to Czech football journalist Tomas Danicek, Kinsky Jnr regularly played as an outfield player until he was “13 or 14 years old,” on the advice of his father who felt it would give him an edge over other young keepers.
“He already had a very good foundation in his footwork and the Dukla style certainly helped him in this area of development,” Bittengel says.
“He was and has been brought up to this style for a long time by his father, who was also an excellent goalkeeper. I don’t think he had any weaknesses.”
“Kinsky is really capable of playing with both feet,” he says. “Basically you can’t really recognise if he is using his right or left based on the accuracy or power which is incredibly unique.”
He is also adept at coming for crosses and his preference to catch the ball rather than punch it is almost a throwback. In a way, his style straddles two eras of goalkeeping.
Being able to turn to his old man for advice will have been invaluable in those developmental years but following in the family business creates pressure too. There are big gloves to fill.
Kinsky has used his father’s success as a motivational tool to make the most of his ability. Last summer, he wanted to leave Slavia to play regularly after spending two-and-a-half seasons out on loan at Vyskov and Pardubice.
He was convinced to stick around after regular No 1 Jindrich Stanek suffered an injury at Euro 2024 and it was a good job he did. Kinsky kept 13 clean sheets in 19 league games in the first half of the season to help Slavia go seven points clear at the summit.
“He has it set in his head that he wants to prove something in football and he does everything to make it happen,” Budinsky said.
Were it not for the emergence of Petr Cech, his father may well have earnt more international caps.
Inevitably, comparisons between the Czechia’s best-ever goalkeeper and his long-term heir have sprung up. In 2004, Cech agreed to join Chelsea at the same age as Kinsky is now, albeit from Rennes rather than directly from his homeland.
Cech was capped 124 times and won the lot during his spell at Stamford Bridge in which he established himself as one of, if not the best goalkeeper in Premier League history.
Whether Kinsky emulates Cech’s career or even comes close remains to be seen but those who have followed his development closely believe he has more to his game.
“He is compared a lot to Petr Cech, who had a similar journey,” says Bittengel. “Tonda [a nickname given to people called Antonin] is a better footballer and if he is at full strength in his next career, he can push the bar set by Petr even further.
“Distribution was definitely a weakness of his [Cech],” says Danicek. “Kinsky in a way is a very complete goalkeeper, especially at his current age.”
Cech revealed that during his time as Chelsea’s technical director, the club tracked Kinsky from before his professional bow with Dukla.
He too has been an inspiration and soundboard for Kinsky, as has Radek Cerny, his former coach at Slavia Prague who made the same direct switch to Spurs in the mid-2000s.
“He had the opportunity to talk about the transfer with people who are close to him and who have achieved something in life and sport, and one of them was Petr Cech,” Kolar said last week.
“At Slavia Prague, we were looking for a goalkeeper who could essentially act as an eleventh outfield player, someone capable of playing the ball and initiating build-up from the back,” Cerny told Flashscore.
“That was the most important factor. Having a great shot-stopper is excellent, but if they lack strong footwork and the ability to contribute to the team’s play, it’s almost useless for the modern game and its future demands.”
Kinsky’s impressive start has given Postecoglou a decision to make with Vicario closing in on a return.
Before suffering an ankle injury in the 4-0 win over City in November, Vicario had started 48 Premier League games out of 48 after joining from Empoli in 2023.
Vicario congratulated Kinsky on the pitch after his Liverpool debut and both are good characters who will spur the other on.
“We had and still have a great relationship with each other,” Budinsky says.
“In training, he was a hard worker, he often added to the goalkeeping exercises. He didn’t like it when we did some exercises and the last shot ended up in the goal, so we had to have one more series!
“We were competitors but at the same time good friends, in training we worked 100 per cent and it was always fun.
“When I was playing, he supported me, after every match we evaluated the match and it was the other way around. When he was in goal I tried to give him the best service.”
As a club Spurs have long had an undisputed first-choice keeper, with Hugo Lloris filling that role for well over a decade before handing over to Vicario.
Now, there is credible competition between two each capable of being the No 1. That can only be beneficial to Postecoglou as he plots an end to the club’s trophy drought.
