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I almost feel sorry for Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius, because he will be absolutely heartbroken after his nightmare display in the Champions League Final 3-1 defeat to Spanish giants Real Madrid and it will affect him for the rest of his career.
However, I’m still enjoying his ‘heroics’ from the weekend too much and breaking out into deep laughs as I type this article. It’s arguable he’s more of a Manchester United legend than our own David De Gea now!
In all seriousness, as a goalkeeper myself, I know how horrible the feeling can be. It’s easily the most difficult and important position you can play on the football field.
Unlike strikers who are constantly lauded as match-winners and their every goal celebrated, or midfielders who create the opportunities, or even defenders with a heroic block, goalkeepers are just seen as ‘doing their job’.
You can pull off 10 phenomenal saves, but if you make one mistake amongst those, that’s the only thing the fans and the media are going to remember, he flopped not once, but twice.
Sadly, for Karius, this is a highlights package that will play over and over again, long after he’s retired, and his two mistakes last night will live far longer in the memory than any sprawling stop or penalty save he ever makes.
I honestly don’t see any way back for him at Liverpool now.
Karius had an awful night and it must have been devastating for him to be completely alone in his penalty area at the end of the game. The Real Madrid players were the only ones who ventured over there console him, with not a single Liverpool player or member of the coaching staff in the vicinity.
I guess You’ll Never Walk Alone is just a tagline, eh?
I know from experience, even on a far smaller scale, that when you lose a game as a player, you sometimes need a few minutes to collect your thoughts, and those are times you are really just thinking about yourself and you feel so guilty that you’re ashamed to even look at your team-mates.
But surely one of his team-mates could have gone over, put their arm round him and given him a big hug - even if they did not know what to say.
I am sure they did that back in the dressing room, once they got over their disappointment, and his manager will have a quiet word and support him too.
But, even if manager Jurgen Klopp backs him publicly, as well as privately, he must know that he is not good enough for Liverpool and what they want to achieve.
You need a top goalkeeper to win trophies and he is not one of those. Can they afford to keep playing him, thinking he might become one? No.
Karius always looks like he has a mistake in him, and that cost them dearly on Saturday night.
Oops 1: when he threw the ball at Karim Benzema and it rebounded in straight off his leg, was a massive howler, but it was also a little bit of a fluke.
Oops 2: his second mistake, when he fumbled Gareth Bale’s shot over the line, was something I don’t think he can ever recover from.
As Klopp said afterwards, I don’t think he would have done it if he had not made the first error, because he clearly wasn’t over that despite Liverpool equalising soon afterwards.
Mistakes stick in your head for the rest of the game, and the only way to banish them is if the outfield players drag you out of the fire by winning the game. This clearly wasn’t a guarantee at 1-1 with Real Madrid increasing the pressure.
It is not just focus that Karius lacks because technique-wise, he is flawed too. One of the things I have noticed with him is that he parries everything that comes at him, which is fine, but he sends the ball straight back to where it has come from instead of to the side of the goal.
It almost cost Liverpool a goal in the first half against Real when, in making a great save to deny Cristiano Ronaldo, he pushed the ball out to Benzema, who put the ball in the net but was offside.
I don’t know whether or not Liverpool thought they would need a new goalkeeper this summer, but they are going to have to address that situation urgently now.
In fact, it boggles the mind why they haven’t already – considering there has been huge question marks against both Karius and Simon Mignolet for years now. If they can afford to blow £75m on Virgil van Dijk, they can afford half that on a class keeper, especially with a lot of the Coutinho money still floating around.
In my opinion, the two best options would be Stoke’s Jack Butland, who will almost certainly leave the relegated Potters and would thus come at a lower price, or Burnley’s Nick Pope.
With Tom Heaton back from injury, Pope will not want to return to his role on the Clarets’ bench after his breakout season where he forced his way into the England squad.
Whatever happens, it’s clear Karius won’t be occupying the No 1 jersey come August. Even if his manager backs him, the fans will never trust him again and opposition fans will give him huge stick every time an opposition player approaches his goal. That will affect his already-shattered confidence.
Finally, you can’t mention the Champions League Final without commiserating Liverpool and Egypt stiker Mohamed Salah’s untimely shoulder injury amd saluting Gareth Bale’s tremendous strike for his first goal after coming off the bench.
If the Welsh wizard can’t get a starting place in Spain perhaps he should look for a return to the Premier League with Manchester United.
