Loris Karius looks set to remain Liverpool’s first choice goalkeeper after club manager Jurgen Klopp said his errors in the Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid were because he was concussed.
Karius, who was diagnosed as suffering from concussion by two American doctors days after the final as a result of an elbow from Real hardman Sergio Ramos, is likely to start in goal for the Premier League side in a pre-season friendly with Chester City on Saturday.
Klopp’s comments come after earlier efforts reportedly to buy Brazilian number one Allisson from Serie A outfit AS Roma came to nothing. The Italians, irked they had sold Egyptian star Mohamed Salah to Liverpool too cheaply last year, upped the price to beyond what the English club were willing to pay.
Klopp, though, told Liverpoolfc.com nothing had changed for him with regard to his fellow German Karius’s status from the moment the final whistle sounded in the final to his return to pre-season training.
Karius had been distraught at the end of the 3-1 defeat and it had been remarked the players who consoled him on the pitch were Nacho and Gareth Bale from Real as well as Liverpool icon turned pundit Jamie Carragher and not initially his own team-mates
“I don’t know exactly what people think or made of the situation. The only thing I can say is he had a concussion in the game.” said Klopp.
“Whoever had a concussion knows there is not one way how it feels, there are different ways. He didn’t feel it obviously.
“That’s how concussions are. The guy who has it is the last one to be aware of it probably.”
Klopp, who will be under pressure to deliver some silverware this season after taking Liverpool to three finals and losing all of them, says it took a phone call from German legend Franz Beckenbauer – who spoke to “Germany’s most famous doctor” – to convince him it had been concussion.
“I got all the pictures from different perspectives, saw it and thought: ‘how can we all think that the boy who didn’t show any weakness in that game until then, made these big mistakes in a very important game and nobody thinks it’s because of the knock he got’?” said Klopp.
“But now I know a concussion isn’t coming and going in a day. Five days after the final, Loris had 26 of 30 markers for a concussion still. That’s clear.”
“So, from this point of view, from my side everything is fine. We don’t think about that anymore and we start completely new,” said Klopp.
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