Few won’t have heard about the absolute howler made by the World’s most of the expensive keeper Allison Becker for Liverpool v Leicester.

A game in which liverpool were cruising to a 2-0 victory before the gaff, the momentum changed and they barely clung on to take the 3 points.

With Allison being brought in after the career damaging errors in the Champions League final by his predecessor Karius (seen here), this was more than embarrassing, but in this post we’ll attempt to explain his mistake and learn some important lessons.

Firstly the gaff – the defender Virgil van Dijk, himself one of the most expensive, finds himself under pressure and slides the ball back toward the keeper, Allison.
It’s a little wide and Allison, who is slow to get to it, strangely opts to perform a “Cruyff turn”, falls over himself as he’s tackled and concedes the goal.
First impression is simply arrogance punished.

So why did he do it ? Well perhaps first impressions are wrong – Allison is Brazilian and renowned for his clever footwork, as he showed in pre-season here;

Furthermore his distribution is excellent, and capable of instigating an attack, as we see here,

So what happened in this case ? In this slideshow we explain why Allison made the mistake, and what we can learn from his gaff.

 

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But it’s clearly hurt him, as his response to the goal shows in this clip – note his coach Klopp also suggests an alternative judo/Ninja move which he’d have preferred the keeper to try…… lol!

What can a young goalkeeper learn from this?

We think there are Five things to learn;

  1.  The goalkeeper’s “resting place” – where he/she stands – is crucial. It’s important that the defender knows exactly where you’ll be at all times.
  2.  The quality of the back pass– VanDijk’s is wide but it’s firm – so the keeper has to go back to reach it. Maybe the defender didn’t know where the keeper would be.
  3. The keeper’s first touch – in this case not good, and maybe this is why he changes his mind and decided not to just “hoof it” to safely.
  4. The arrogance – once it’s obvious a back-pass is NOT going to be easy to deal with, the keeper should always decide to just clear it, even if that means a throw-in. NOT to attempt “cruyff turns”…..
  5. Learning from the mistake – after the game Allison stated that “he is not arrogant enough to keep doing it,” and “he will learn from his mistake” . It’s crucial to put your hand in the air and take the blame, to maintain team unity.13C68882-75D5-4D26-9BB8-76DD82AD10BF

The cheapest lesson we learn in life is from someone else’s mistake.

Surely the best value for money is to learn from the World’s most expensive goalkeeper making his biggest howler….