62 Wednesday May 25 2022 | the timesSportChampions League final
make sure it is one mistake. With
Karius it happened with two.”
Was it coincidence, or concussion,
that led Karius to have his worst night
when the pressure was at its most
intense? Jeremy Snape, the former
England cricketer turned successful
sports psychologist, knows how easy
it is to freeze on such an occasion. He
was playing against India in a one-
day international in 2002 in front of
120,000 raucous fans in Calcutta
when, as the pressure grew on a run-
chase, he ran out Andrew Flintoff.
“I was in a cauldron of noise but
the loudest voice was the one in my
head saying, ‘You’ve really messed
this up, this will ruin your career,’ ”
Snape says. “I had an out-of-body
experience. My hands were numb, my
legs felt like lead and I was
hyperventilating. I was in a panic.”
He played a reckless shot, almost
relieved to be out, and it set him on a
new path with the company Sporting
Edge towards understanding how
psychology has to fight against
human instincts.
“Our brain is primed to recall
damaging, scary or negative incidents
because we are designed, not around
high-performance, but how to stay
safe,” he says. “It’s hardwired in us.
“Then comes the modern overlay
of media and social media which has
reached a whole new level; a game
broadcast to the world with endless
analysis, millions of social media
addicts turning it into memes and
gags. You can struggle to escape.
“The worst-case scenario in our
belief system is when we take it to an
identity-level — ‘I am a failure’ —
and it’s fixed. At the other end, there
is the ability to see it as a specific
error of skill at a specific time to learn
from. The growth mindset. That’s theMassimo Taibi
Manchester United
In his third game for
United, against
Southampton on
September 25, 1999, the
£4.5 million signing let a
weak shot from Matt Le
Tissier slip underneath
his body and through
his legs during the 3-3
draw. The error led to
him being dubbed “The
Blind Venetian” by
one newspaper.
He played only once
more for United, in a
5–0 defeat away to
Chelsea on October 3,
1999.Frank Haffey
Scotland
Remembered as one of
Celtic’s great — and
more eccentric —Sealey made a number
of saves as United won
1–0. Leighton only made
one more appearance
for United and later
joined Dundee in
February 1992.
His relationship with
Ferguson deteriorated
to the point where the
two were no longer on
speaking terms.Perry Suckling
Crystal Palace
Capped by England at
under-21 level, Suckling
helped Crystal Palace
win promotion to the
top flight in 1989.
But in September he
conceded nine goals in
a notorious defeat by
Liverpool at Anfield,
persuading the Palace
manager Steve Coppell
to make Bristol Rovers’
Nigel Martyn the
world’s first £1 million
goalkeeper a few
weeks later.
Martyn was in goal
when Palace gained
their revenge over
Liverpool in the FA Cup
semi-final that season.
Suckling later played in
South Africa and finally
for King’s Lynn. He is
now the head
goalkeeping coach at
Tottenham Hotspur’s
academy.goalkeepers, Haffey
made 201 appearances
for the club.
However, his
international career was
somewhat shorter. In
his second game for
Scotland, in 1961, he
conceded nine goals
against England. He
never played for the
national side again and
later moved to
Australia.
After hanging up his
gloves he became a
comedian and later ran
a goalkeeping clinic on
the Gold Coast,
Queensland.Jim Leighton
Manchester United
Leighton won seven
domestic trophies and
the 1982-83 European
Cup Winners’ Cup with
Aberdeen under Sir Alex
Ferguson.
He followed Ferguson
to Old Trafford. In the
1989-90 season,
Leighton was in goal for
a 5–1 defeat by their
neighbours Manchester
City. He then conceded
three goals in the 1990
FA Cup final, a 3–3
draw with Crystal
Palace.
He was
dropped for the
replay, in which Les‘H
aven’t really slept until
now... the scenes are
still running through
my head again and
again... I’m infinitely
sorry... I know that I messed it up
with the two mistakes and let you all
down... we will come back stronger.”
Loris Karius was right about the
last part; Liverpool have come back a
whole lot stronger. Four years after
they lost 3-1 to Real Madrid in the
Champions League final, it is a
superior outfit that will seek revenge
on Saturday evening in Paris.
Sadly for the German goalkeeper,
his descent from first choice on that
calamitous evening to fifth in
the pecking order at Anfield
is one of the starkest
measures of change.
Karius is still being paid
handsomely by
Liverpool but it is not
even clear if he has a
place in the travelling
party this weekend.
For the past 12 months,
Karius has been coming
into training to work with
Alisson, Caoimhin Kelleher,
Adrián and Marcelo Pitaluga
knowing it will take all four of them
to share a case of Covid for him to be
more than a spare part. It is not as if
he is in exile or being punished; it is
just the brutal reality of elite sport.
It used to be said that goalkeepers
are mad, but vulnerable might be
nearer to the truth when one reflects
on how the German’s career went so
spectacularly awry on the biggest
night of his life. We might ask
whether he can ever recover from his
last, fateful appearance in a Liverpool
shirt in Kyiv.
To watch that final back again and
the moment, at 0-0 in the 51st
minute, when he throws the ball
straight against the outstretched leg
of a disbelieving Karim Benzema is to
feel once again the abject
mortification; to see him spill Gareth
Bale’s long-range shot over his own
shoulder to give Real a 3-1 lead and
certain victory is to see a ball dropped
and a fragile reputation shattered.
The reasons remain disputed.
There was the sly elbow which Sergio
Ramos planted on Karius’s head
shortly before the first error.How do you
recover from
giving away a
major final?
Matt Dickinson and
Paul Joyce speak to
those who have been in
shoes of Loris Karius
on sport’s biggest stages
Returning in July for the following
campaign, Jürgen Klopp explained:
“Five days after the final, Loris had 26
of 30 markers for a concussion still.”
He added: “If you ask Loris, he says
he didn’t think about it and didn’t use
it for a second as an excuse. We don’t
use it as an excuse, we use it as an
explanation.”
But can it fully explain how Karius
has struggled to rebuild a career
which was regarded as so full of
promise in 2016 when Klopp went
back to Mainz, his former club, to sign
the former Germany Under-21
goalkeeper for £4.7 million to
challenge and then take over from
Simon Mignolet? Without ever fully
convincing, in Karius’s second season
he had managed to do that; he was
then involved in epic matches like
knocking Manchester City out of the
Champions League en route to the
final.
But the threat is always there for a
goalkeeper. “It’s a very different
psychological place,” Rob Green, the
former England international
and now pundit, explains.
“The only person on the
pitch whose job is
entirely reactionary.
That is a very different
challenge in itself.”
Green used a
psychologist for support
to avoid feeling as
though he was separate
to the outfield players, and
in preparation. “Visualisation
was a big thing for me,” he says.
“The night before a game I would
spend an hour writing through what I
thought might happen, what I wanted
to happen, how I intended to feel, my
trigger words. What do I feel when I
am in the right mindset?”
It is, he says, all about reinforcing
the ability to respond to the inevitable
mistakes; like missing a backpass
early in his career at Norwich City
and, infamously, allowing a Clint
Dempsey shot through his grasp
in England’s opening game of the
World Cup, against the United States,
in 2010.
“We did not lose the game,” he says.
“I made saves in the second half
which kept us in it. It was a one-off.
But you need a body of armour and
that comes from the process. Once
every six months, say, you will
have one and think: ‘That’s
awful.’ Even the best
goalkeepers. It is
about having the
processes to3
Days until the Champions
League final.
Saturday, 8pm
TV: BT Sport 1
Radio: talkSPORTKarius has remained
on Liverpool’s books
but will soon leaveGaffe-prone goalkeepers who lost their place