Barthez: Courtois is a goalkeeping great

Former France No.1 Fabien Barthez has described Thibaut Courtois as a "goalkeeping great" and expects the Chelsea man to maintain that status in the years to come.

The 23-year-old ousted Petr Cech as Jose Mourinho's first-choice shot-stopper after winning La Liga and reaching the Champions League final with Atletico Madrid last season.

With 12 clean sheets to his name ahead of Monday's trip to West Brom, Courtois is in contention for the Golden Glove in his debut Premier League term and Barthez is convinced the Belgian will only improve further.

"I like Hugo [Lloris] a lot," he told Fifa.com. "Then there’s Thibaut Courtois. To my mind, he’s the goalkeeping great of the future. And I think he’ll maintain that status for a few years too.

"There are a lot of keepers in Europe’s major leagues who aren’t very good with their feet. The likes of Manuel Neuer, Thibault Courtois and Hugo Lloris all play pretty high up but most keepers still lack depth in their game.

"We're almost going backwards. In the 1980s keepers had to be big. They had to take up as much space in the goal as possible, and we’ve gone back to that a little bit.

"Obviously, for me personally, that’s not how I see the job of goalkeeping. I think it’s a little bit more important than that."