‘I was getting confronted’ – Ex-Liverpool player knew when he needed to leave for ‘fresh start’ | OneFootball

One former Liverpool player has spoken out about the need for a ‘fresh start’ away from Anfield after a moment when he knew things had gone ‘downhill’.

The 2018 Champions League final against Real Madrid – who the Reds face in that competition tonight – will sadly be remembered for two costly goalkeeping mistakes from Loris Karius as his team lost 3-1 in Kyiv.

Having played in every European match that season from the group stage onwards, it’d prove to be the German’s last game for us, even though he technically remained an LFC player for another four years.

Karius recounts Liverpool exit

Now 31, Karius gave an interview to SPORTbible in which he reflected on the aftermath of that career-defining night and how he felt compelled to ‘get away’ from Liverpool due to the continued focus on him right throughout that summer.

The former Reds goalkeeper said: “I wasn’t performing at my best but I still performed well in the second season. Everything was on the up and then the final happened. It went downhill from there.

“My confidence was knocked in the days after and in pre-season, for sure. Everything I did was getting looked at. It was so extreme. It all got a bit too much.

“I was trying not to pay any interest but you couldn’t get away from it all. You still notice. People are telling you. I was getting confronted all the time, and that’s why I wanted a fresh start rather than staying at Liverpool, where I could have been behind Alisson and still getting game time.

“Maybe in the end that would have been the better step but it’s difficult to say at that stage.”

(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

Liverpool swiftly moved on, but Karius’ career stalled

Obviously it was tough to watch Karius commit two grievous errors in that Champions League final in Kyiv, but the level of personal abuse which was levelled at him afterwards was completely out of order.

That horror show against Real Madrid also came to be portrayed in a different light after a subsequent medical examination revealed that he’d been given a concussion, which seemingly came from an elbow to the head from Sergio Ramos, who’d also heinously sabotaged Mo Salah’s involvement that night and got away with it.

Unfortunately for the German, footage of him blundering before a pre-season match a few weeks later thrust him into the spotlight once more, and it didn’t seem coincidental that Liverpool broke the world-record fee for a goalkeeper to sign Alisson Becker for £67m that summer.

Karius’ career never recovered from that night in Ukraine – following two years on loan at Besiktas, he’s played just seven senior games (for Union Berlin and Newcastle) since the start of the 2020/21 season, and he’s been a free agent for the past five months.

The transformative performances of Alisson at Anfield show that it was 100% the right decision to bring him in, but it’s still a shame to have seen his predecessor as the Reds’ number 1 suffer such a fall from grace. We wish him nothing but the best in both a footballing and personal sense.