Jurgen Klopp has been raving about the quality of Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker.
Alisson has once again been in brilliant form this season, underlining his status as the very best goalkeeper in the game.
And as per a recent interview with Ben Foster for Amazon Prime Video Sport, Jurgen Klopp agrees with the notion that the Brazilian is the best around.
“The craziest thing about Ali – and I think he’s the best goalie in the world as well – but as a person he’s even better,” gushed the Liverpool boss. “That’s so crazy. When you look at him you think ‘I don’t want to have another goalkeeper’. That’s the goalie you want to have. He’s calm as you like, he’s smart, a really good person. Wants to play each game, if we leave him out for whatever reason he’s like ‘why?’. So he has this competitiveness as well.
“He has a real football brain, he thinks about things, you talk to him about different situations. I have no clue about goalkeeping really, but he explains it to me and you think ‘ah, got it’.
“How often he catches a ball, where everybody has to jump and he just takes it like that. It doesn’t look at all spectacular and people don’t realise how big a save it was. That’s his biggest skill. When we wanted to bring him in we analysed him and watched his game, it’s ridiculous how calm he is and it’s still like that. He’s absolutely exceptional.”
Klopp delighted with Alisson
You won’t find a Liverpool fan anywhere on the planet who disagrees with Klopp on this. Alisson is one of the relatively few Reds players who is completely above reproach.
There are others who are universally adored, no doubt. But people will debate about Mohamed Salah‘s all-round contribution, or whether Virgil van Dijk is still one of the best around. With Alisson though, there’s simply no argument to be had.
Right now, as he has been for over 12 months now, the 31-year-old is Liverpool’s most important player.
Take him out the team and the Reds instantly go from potential title challengers to probable top-four hopefuls. He’s that good.
As Jurgen points out, one of the most impressive things about Alisson is his ability to make difficult things look easy.
Supporters of other clubs often point to incredible looking saves as to why their goalkeeper is actually better than Alisson. But they’re missing the point. Ali doesn’t need to make these ‘camera saves’ because his position is often one step ahead.
It might not look as impressive, but stepping across and catching a ball beats tipping it around the post every day of the week. From there, Alisson can start Liverpool off on a lightning-quick counter up the other end.
There are other strings to his bow which make the Brazil stopper the best around, too. And as Klopp says, there isn’t anyone you’d rather have guarding your goal. Alisson’s our goalie, the best there is around.
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