“With your characteristics, you could be a goalkeeper in England one day,” Christophe Lollichon told Ewen Jaouen. Those words proved prophetic: the uncapped French Under-21s international has undergone a medical and is set to complete a £18.5m move from Stade de Reims to Newcastle United.
The 20-year-old, who has never played top-flight football, is making an “almighty step up” from Ligue 2. But his potential convinced Newcastle to pay a significant fee for a goalkeeper whose promise is “undoubted”. Lollichon, Chelsea’s former head of goalkeeping, coached Jaouen during a loan spell at USL Dunkerque in 2024-25 and knows his game intimately.
“Newcastle pay £18.5m for uncapped French goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen, 20, from Ligue 2 side Stade de Reims.”
“Ewen is only 20 so, if the context is positive, I don’t know the limit for him,” Lollichon told BBC Sport. He likened Jaouen’s profile to when he first saw Thibaut Courtois at 17. Not since Edouard Mendy has a Reims goalkeeper kept as many clean sheets in a single league campaign – 15 last season.
Standing 6ft 6in, Jaouen is “proactive in his box, decent with his feet, can produce a big save” and has room for improvement. He describes himself as a “modern 'keeper”. Yet his path has not been smooth. After errors at Dunkerque, he lost his place to Adrian Ortola, who was better at playing out from the back.
Lollichon cautioned against throwing him straight into the Premier League, which would be “a little bit dangerous”. “I think the objective of Newcastle is for him to observe the new level in his first season,” he said. “The intensity, the quality of the players, is a big change but Ewen has this ability to adapt very quickly.”
Jaouen is “very professional” and “very discreet”, according to Lollichon. “He needs to feel love around him,” the coach added. For a player who has come a long way in a short time, Newcastle are betting on a giant with yet unknown limits.