Jurgen Klopp believes a new-look goalkeeping department will limit Liverpool’s need for expensive recruits in the future. The Reds added Brazil’s 1994 World Cup winner Claudio Taffarel to their ranks this week after a glowing recommendation from Alisson Becker, who works with the 55-year-old at international level.
Jurgen Klopp said : “When I was a player, the most important skill of a goalie was to catch balls. It still is, but from then on it developed incredibly. So years ago if you did a back pass it was like ‘what?!’ You could pass the ball back but that meant the goalkeeper had to use his feet and it was really tricky. It’s obviously a position which is getting more and more influential, and not in the defensive moments, but in offensive moments as well. A lot of goalies kick the ball pretty long which is good, it is good for each team, but it is much more about being involved in build-up situations, being the third player in between the two centre-halves to play the ball. We work on that already. But when I was a player the goalkeeping coach was the head coach as well. The goalie, you pretty much had in your goal until he couldn’t play any more and then we made this job [goalkeeper coach]. We started with two goalie coaches now and worked it pretty well with Jack [Robinson],” continued Klopp. We all have different ideas and we mix it up. John is incredible, pretty much like a goalkeeping book; he thinks of nothing else! I know that we were criticised, people blame the goalie coach if the goalkeeper was not so good in the past, but it’s not about that. Now we bring something completely different in, which makes sense. And for the boys who are not involved on a weekend, we can really work with them properly and consistently. And we thought somebody with their real own opinion would be good, we want to challenge ourselves and improve the goalies. We had to buy the best goalie in the world (Alisson) for big money. That should not happen that often any more. We invest a lot in scouting and youth, and I think we have in Marcelo Pitaluga and Harvey Davies incredible talents here. It cannot only be that we give them on loan and hope they develop at another club as well as we estimate. So maybe we can keep them longer here and work more, do different things so that they make a career here or wherever. Adrian is injured at the moment so Marcelo is now No.3. He’s a very young boy, but we just want to make sure we can help them to have a much higher probability to have the best career they can have.”
