So… listen to this… Back in 2016, kicker magazine got 235 Bundesliga players to vote for who they thought was the best goalkeeper in the country… and though Manuel Neuer was obviously at the top… the impressive thing was that the second name on the list wasn’t all that far from him… only about 24 votes less… and it wasn’t Leno or Yann Sommer… it was a 23 year old keeper with less than 100 matches under his belt… the infamous, Loris Karius… These days, people seem to have forgotten this…but he really was a wonderkid, they called him “the next Manuel Neuer”. . .
back when he was only 16, still playing academy football… he was one of the most hyped young goalkeepers in the world, he had half of the Premier League fighting for his signing, and even stranger… he ended up at Man City who, according to Stuttgart’s academy director, paid them “an exorbitant amount of money for the kid”… He had a billionaire club moving mountains just to get him to sign a contract… in his own words: “They called me every day until I said yes… They had me training with the first team from the first day I got there… I was only a kid, already practicing drills with Joe Hart''. . .
but unfortunately for him…. back then, “their focus wasn’t really on bringing through youth players”. .
. In other words, hadn’t City been so obsessed with figuring out who to spend their infinite money on… you could have seen Karius at the Etihad… but instead, well… that’s how he ended up at Mainz… Determined to prove Man City wrong, he asked to be sent out on loan and to his luck… the coach he had waiting for him… was none other than Thomas Tuchel… so things were fast tracked quite a bit… After 4 months, they had signed him permanently… By the next season, he had gotten his debut, becoming the youngest goalkeeper in the history of the club… and a year later, he had completely taken over as a regular starter… Fast forward two and a half years and despite scoring fewer goals than Stuttgart, who were second to last in the table… Mainz had qualified for the Europa League… How? Well… much thanks to Karius… Only Bayern, Schalke and Leverkusen had conceded fewer goals than them… and among the thousands of Mainz supporters watching him break record after record… There was one special man… one that had played for them, one that had managed them… that man was Jurgen Klopp… So, only 3 days after the Bundesliga came to an end… Karius had signed for Liverpool… it had been only 5 years since he had left Man City and he was already joining their biggest rivals… proving them wrong, living the dream… or, at least, so he thought… What barely anyone realized then… was that Karius was just a stop gap signing, a temporary fix, another pawn in Jurgen Klopp’s chess board … whatever you wanna call it… The fact is, had his release clause not been set at an alarmingly low 4.
7 million pounds, had Klopp not had such intimate ties with Mainz… they would have never gone for him… You see, one of Liverpool's most underrated assets is John Achterberg, or as Klopp often refers to him… “the goalkeeper maniac”. . .
to put it quite simply, there aren’t many people in the world who know more about goalkeeping than him… If a kid halfway across the world makes 3 good saves in a row… this guy will know about it… and that’s exactly what happened with Alisson… he had been following him since before he had even played a professional match… the day they signed Karius they already knew that he was destined to become nothing more than a backup… and, honestly, I think that reality dawned on him faster than anyone could think… It was already bad enough that he started off things by rejecting the chance to join the German national team at the Olympics, only to break his hand playing for Liverpool in a pre-season friendly and end up missing the first 5 matches of the season… but once he made it back… Well, 8 matches later, he played maybe the worst goal kick in the history of football, which was especially ironic for a man dubbed “the next Manuel Neuer”. . .
and that was nothing… the next match, he conceded 4 to Bournemouth… allowing them to come from 2 goals behind, letting in an absolute howler in the 90th minute… and the game after that, he only made one save and embarrassed himself yet again… Suddenly, he had Gary Neville trashing him on national tv and to make matters worse he decided to go ahead and clap back, mocking Gary for his disastrous managerial career… only to have his brother Phill telling him “keep your mouth shut and do your job”. . .
So… Now, I’lll ask you one question: What do you think would have happened if it was Alisson in his place? Look, I know they were some pretty embarrassing mistakes, but I think we can all agree that, if he were to do anything at all, Klopp would have dropped him for a game or two, at most… However, when it came to Karius… He dropped him for the rest of the season… 9 months went by before he was allowed to start another league match and even then he only got into the team because Mignolet himself asked Klopp to be rested… after all, in the 5 cup matches he got to play in over that period, he only kept two clean sheets… and they were both against fourth tier Plymouth Argyle… but then, well… Klopp made one decision that would set off a gigantic butterfly effect… He decided that even though Mignolet would be the first choice keeper in every other competition, he wouldn’t play a single minute in the Champions League… that would be all Karius… and the second Mignolet complained about it, Klopp dropped him and made Karius the number 1 keeper again… but as shocking as that decision may have seemed, Klopp only acted that carelessly because, behind the scenes, they were already convinced that by the end of that winter market, Alisson would already be at the club … but then, Roma not only denied their 40 million pound offer, but demanded 90, which would have made him the most expensive keeper of all time by a landslide, precisely a few weeks after Klopp had made Virgil Van Dijk the most expensive defender of all time… and so it all collapsed, leaving Klopp stuck with Karius between the posts for the rest of the season… Regardless, for about 4 months, even if there were some mistakes here and there, nothing horrible happened but once they reached the semi finals of the Champions League… 50 minutes into the second leg, they were up 7 to 3 on aggregate… All he had to do was not concede 4 goals in the space of 40 minutes… but well… in a second, he fouled Dzeko inside the box and hadn't it been for the fact the flag was already up, that would have been a penalty right then and there… still, it didn’t take him long to make sure Roma got the goals they needed, slapping the ball right into Dzeko’s feet, handing him a free goal… and then standing still, not even diving as Naingollan stuck one in from outside the box… add to that a late penalty… and unbelievably, Liverpool had almost been forced into extra time… Karius had just provided them with the biggest red flag they could have ever gotten… and yet, there was nothing they could do about it… 3 weeks later, as they set off to play the Champions League final in what should have been the climax of a season that saw them establish themselves as one of the strongest teams in europe… the fact that Karius was the one standing between the posts was already enough to give any Liverpool fan a cold shiver down their spine… and then… Sergio Ramos arrived… 30 minutes into the match, he slammed Moh Salah onto the ground, spraining his left shoulder and forcing him off the pitch… However, no matter how many football fans will tell you that was an anti football masterclass… It was only after the second half began, that the moment that truly decided the match arrived… with Ramos slamming his elbow straight into the head of Loris Karius for no apparent reason…. leaving him disoriented on the ground… What happened next became some of the most infamous moments in Champions League history… 2 minutes later, Karius rolled the ball straight onto Benzema, allowing him to put Real in front… About a half an hour later, he completely fumbled a ball that was coming straight at him… and pretty much knocked it into his own net… As the game ended, Karius collapsed in a pool of tears, lifting his arms in the air, begging for the fan’s forgiveness… but as much as it was heartbreaking to watch him… disgracefully, not a single Liverpool player even bothered trying to help him… I guess, sometimes, you really do walk alone… and so, courageously, Karius walked towards the post match cameras and told the fans: “Today, I lost my team the game… I feel sorry for everyone… If I could go back in time, I would”.
. . and the next day, he added on his social media: “I haven’t slept until now… The scenes are still running in my head again and again… I’m infinitely sorry”.
. . No matter what… 4 days after the final, Klopp received a call from the legendary Franz Beckenbauer and he told him: “Get your goalkeeper's head checked, I’m almost sure he had a concussion”.
. . The next day Karius was flown to Boston and after rigorous testing, he still presented 26 out of the 30 clinical signs of a concussion… from headaches, to nausea, light sensitivity and loss of memory… but most interestingly, reduced peripheral vision and impaired visual spatial perception… no matter what had happened before, this time Karius wasn’t at fault… he had been sabotaged… still… for some odd reason, it took Liverpool nearly a month to make this public and by then… Well, no matter how much he apologized, Karius had received so many death threats, so much abuse from the club’s supposed “supporters”, that the police had to intervene… The worst thing that happened to Karius wasn’t that concussion… it was the abuse… Those words followed him for the rest of his life, plaguing his mind with anxiety, self-doubt and ultimately… depression… That's what killed his career… as much as Klopp insisted in the coming days that you “could absolutely rely on him”.
. . Karius would never play another official game for Liverpool… Regardless of what he promised him… before their first pre-season friendly had even started, Karius was spotted conceding an embarrassing goal during a warm up and so the internet seemingly forgot everything that had been said and began mocking him mercilessly once again… 3 days later, Liverpool faced fourth tier Tranmere Rovers… and Karius came in at half time and conceded twice… the first another howler and the second… not the greatest either… but what blew it all out of proportion was that the whole thing went viral once the internet realized that as the cameras panned out to the celebration, you could see one of the Tranmere players, supposedly a Liverpool fan himself, yelling at Karius that he was “f-ing.
. . you get it… what matters is that after that game… Klopp changed his mind… As I’ve explained, it was already a given that Alisson was coming in sooner or later and that Karius was only meant to be kept as a backup keeper, but now… with Napoli refusing to meet their valuation of Mignolet and more and more doubts being raised about Karius… they opted to ship him off instead… Still, after two more mistakes in a friendly against Dortmund, it’s not like there were many clubs after him… and with less than a week left until deadline day, he ended up going on a 2 year loan to Besiktas… This was actually a pretty good move, a lot of people really believed that Karius could start rebuilding his reputation there… Not only was Besiktas in the European competitions, not only had they sold their number one keeper in order to accommodate for the arrival of his Karius, but their own manager was Senol Gunes, one of the greatest Turkish goalkeepers of all time… and still only six matches into his time there, precisely in an Europa League match, with everyone watching… a cross came in and somehow Karius let slip in between him and the crossbar… Over the next 7 months, as the mistakes began stacking up… as it became obvious that Karius was doomed to forever live inside his own nightmare… Even Gunes began losing his patience, telling the press: “Something is wrong with Karius… there’s no enthusiasm for the game, it’s like he isn’t even part of the team and it has been like that since he arrived here… He is talented, sure… but it hasn’t worked out and he’s a big problem for us… Let me put it this way… If we still had Tolga available, I would play him before I played Karius”.
. . for some context Tolga was a veteran keeper in the last year of his career… who hadn't even been registered in the first team… and to rub salt in his wounds… just as Karius hit a new low, back in Liverpool, Alisson was putting in a man of the match performance in the Champions League final as he made up for his mistake… becoming an absolute fan favorite and arguably the best goalkeeper on the planet… One way or another, somehow Besitkas still chose not to cancel the loan and keep Karius for a second season and unsurprisingly, 4 matches in, again in the Europa League, he foolishly rushed towards a long ball and watched as it went right past him… Soon after that, Besiktas simply stopped paying him… and though many blamed the pandemic for it, eventually a source within the club leaked what was really happening: “The reality is that they had agreed upon a clause that obligated them to buy Karius at the end of the loan and since they don’t want him, they wanna make sure that by the end, staying isn’t even a viable option”.
. . and it worked… Two and a half years after the final, Karius was back in Liverpool even if, obviously, they didn’t want him there… so he began looking for another loan move and with his relationship with his girlfriend falling apart, he ended up joining Union Berlin, the team of her hometown… only to get dumped soon after….
not to mention that he’d miss pre-season and end up stuck there playing second fiddle to 35 year old Andreas Luthe who had played in the second tier for most of his career… With another disastrous loan move, Karius kind of gave up for a while… He went back to Liverpool, rejected the one offer he got to join FC Basel and when they told him they were gonna leave him out of the Premier League squad… he didn’t make a fuss, he stayed there for a full season, just keeping fit and sticking to his training regimen, until they released him unceremoniously… being left as a free agent for the first time in his career before strangely signing for Newcastle… They never meant for him to actually play, they only signed him because Darlow had injured his ankle and Dubravka had left for United on a half season loan at the last minute… but that was precisely how Karius ended up being set up for what Dubravka himself called “a moment straight out of a movie”. . .
You see, by February, despite not having won a trophy since 1969, Newcastle had made it to the final of the league cup but… Nick Pope was suspended, Darlow had left, Gillespie was injured and Dubravka… well… the final was against United, he was cup-tied, he couldn’t play either… so… there wasn’t even a choice… Karius would have to be the one to play… he had a chance to complete the greatest redemption story this sport had ever seen… But while many were happy to see him back on TV, others just went back to harassing him the moment he was spotted making some mistakes in the warm up… but in the end, with 8 saves he had arguably been one of the best on the pitch and even as Newcastle lost, he told the press that “his story will have a happy ending”. . .
