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**Shaggy** · 26-01-22, 11:21 AM

Good interview with Taffarel

[ame]https://twitter.com/SamWilIiams/status/1486270441232740352[/ame]

Taffarel: How a legend is helping to shape LFC's goalkeeping philosophy

Claudio Taffarel’s high expectations have been exceeded.

“When we came here, I knew it would be very good for me and for my career. But now I am here, I feel even better than I thought I would,” the newest addition to Jürgen Klopp’s backroom team tells Liverpoolfc.com, with the help of his wife - and ad-hoc translator - Andrea.

“It is so nice. It’s such a big club and all the history is unbelievable. It’s really, really good.

“I thought that maybe because it is such a big club they would not be interested in the small things, the small details, but I was wrong!

“They are interested in everything: making you feel comfortable at home, asking if you need something. Everything, they care about everything, so this is very, very good. They have people who can help you at any time and in any situation. This makes you feel comfortable.

“I cannot speak very good English but people at the club support me so much, and also people outside the club too: in the street, in the supermarket. People are very kind and they want to help, they want you to feel good. It’s very nice for us here.

“I’ve known Alisson for many years; we started off at the same club, Internacional, and I have known him since he was a boy! Brazilian people, we always like to socialise together so it is good for us to have fellow Brazilians here, but it is also important to have friendships with people from here.

“That also helps me to improve my English and means we can learn about the country. This is very, very nice for us. Very nice! It is nice. I like! When we lived in Italy and Turkey it was the same; we have always thought it is important to get to know people from the place you are living in because this is how you live like them.”

A legendary figure who played in two World Cup finals, winning one, and amassed 101 international caps for Brazil, Taffarel joined Liverpool as a goalkeeping coach in November.

He combines his duties with his position as goalkeeper coach for the Brazil national team - where he also, of course, works with Alisson Becker - and it was during a Selecao training session that he first met John Achterberg, who heads up the Reds’ goalkeeping department.

“It was a few years ago and John came to watch the Brazil team train in London,” Taffarel recalls.

“I think it was when Alisson was in Rome that he said to me: ‘If I have the possibility to bring you to my club with me, I will do it.’

“So I have always had it in mind that I might work with Alisson at club level as well, but I had my job at Galatasaray and I was working with the national team, so I was not desperate to work at another club.

“But I think Alisson spoke to John and Jürgen and they liked the idea of me working here. They made it happen and I was very, very happy. The first time I heard from Jürgen I decided straight away that it would be a very, very nice thing to come here.

“Alisson always talked to me about Liverpool; about the ambience and that the people were very friendly. Everything he told me, I can now see that it was true!”

Shortly after Taffarel’s arrival, Klopp spoke of Liverpool’s aim to become ‘a proper goalkeeping school in world football’.

“We want to build our own philosophy in goalkeeping because we all agree it’s its own game, so that’s why we wanted to have another completely different view on it,” the boss said.

Taffarel’s brief, then, is to provide a different perspective to Achterberg and assistant first-team goalkeeping coach Jack Robinson.

But how does he do that in practice? How does he contribute to the creation of a goalkeeping ideology unique to the club?

“Brazilian football and goalkeeping is completely different in terms of style to England,” Taffarel details.

“In Brazil, a lot of the goalkeeping work is on technical things like movements and this is my role here: to work on these techniques with the senior goalkeepers and begin teaching the younger goalkeepers these techniques too.

“John and Jack work a lot on kicking and crosses: these are match situations and situations that are particularly specific to English football. Whereas I work a lot on positioning, the right positioning, and movements.”

Along with Achterberg and Robinson, Taffarel plans the goalkeepers’ training sessions and he will often work with Liverpool’s younger stoppers at the AXA Training Centre while Achterberg and Robinson are at first-team matches.

Has he been impressed by the quality of the Reds’ cohort of ’keepers?

“Alisson is one of the best goalkeepers in the world, Adrian has lots of experience and Caoimhin is showing his quality in the cups,” he replies.

“But also the younger guys, they have a lot to learn but they are in good condition and they will grow with this new philosophy, this new work, we are doing. That will be great for them and great for us also.”

Also twice a Copa America champion with his country, Taffarel’s playing and coaching career had been split between spells in his homeland, Italy and Turkey prior to his move to Merseyside.

The 55-year-old is loving the experience of working in - and learning from - a different footballing culture and believes doing so is enhancing his coaching credentials.

“I am enjoying it very much. I am learning and I will take things from the work we are doing here and use them with the national team, because it is very important to mix the styles,” Taffarel states.

“It’s very important to put everything together and work on match situations and technique exercises. It is very interesting for me.”

**Fivex** · 26-01-22, 11:30 AM

This is very, very nice for us. Very nice! It is nice. I like!

**Kenneth** · 26-01-22, 11:31 AM

That’s nice.

**Pablo** · 26-01-22, 11:34 AM

yes, very, very nice interview.

**Shaggy** · 25-02-22, 06:12 PM

[ame]https://twitter.com/_pauljoyce/status/1497256556525764612[/ame]

Jürgen Klopp: I was so drained after last season – I couldn’t have cared less about football

The Liverpool manager on his darkest days at the club, getting his mojo back and why he won’t be wearing a suit this time at Wembley

Paul Joyce
, Northern Football Correspondent
Friday February 25 2022, 5.00pm, The Times

Jürgen Klopp had two wishes at the start of the season. The first was that his Liverpool squad would avoid any more long-term injuries. The second was for football stadiums to hum once again to the familiar sound of hopes rising and falling as a din of expectation swirled.

There would be no mention of claiming silverware, primarily because he was sure that if everything stayed in place, glistening opportunities would follow.

And so as the Liverpool manager surveyed Sunday’s Carabao Cup final with Chelsea to be played in front of 90,000 supporters at Wembley — a date which brings the chance to claim a first trophy of a season alive with possibilities — there were no fears.

Holding court this week in a commercial lounge at the club’s AXA Training Centre for a first informal meeting with local journalists in almost two years, the 54-year-old’s mood was buoyant and his eyes sparkled.

Yet what Klopp is today, revitalised and with his mojo back, marks a sharp contrast with the figure he cut a year ago, when enduring the darkest and most intense period of his managerial career.

Mounting injuries and the unappealing slog of touring empty, Covid-restricted grounds prompted a downturn in results which left him feeling “caged,” sapped and unable to switch-off. There was also the passing of his mother, Elisabeth, 81, with the German government’s travel ban meaning that he was unable to attend her funeral.

As Klopp reflected on that time, during which Liverpool scrambled over the line “pretty much on three wheels” to sneak into third place and seal Champions League qualification, he admits to becoming ground down by circumstances. With hindsight, it also taught him how much he loves the game.

“Yes, that’s true,” he says. “That is how it is. I never got used to it, but when you don’t have it, you realise. The atmosphere, for example. Sometimes it is not that good in a stadium. That doesn’t really happen for us, but if it is the case you think, ‘Why was it like that?’

“But if you have no atmosphere, you take each atmosphere. In some moments, it was the hardest time of our lives — at least our football lives — because you are still Liverpool but with half-cut wings. You try to fly but it is pretty difficult.

“I am an emotional coach, we are an emotional team, we are an emotional club. We are not like a little bit here, a little bit there. We need this extra bit.

“That was obviously not there and it was not helpful in the most difficult situation we had. Injury-wise, it was absolutely crazy.

“That is why I always say, after winning the Premier League [in 2019-20], winning the Champions League [in 2019], winning other cup competitions, I think finishing third last season comes next pretty quickly because that was absolutely incredible how we did that in the end. Incredible. We were pretty much on three wheels, getting somehow over the line.

“It was an incredibly intense season and, yes, I was more than happy for a holiday. For the first ten days, I didn’t take out the phone one time, or whatever, and ask, ‘Could we have this player?’ I couldn’t have cared less at that moment.

“Why should managers be different [to other people]? But for all of us it was the same. We were all really drained. Just finished. Done.

“[I learnt] I’m calmer than I thought in difficult moments. I never thought more about football, and I think a lot about football, than in this period. How can we make it work? How can we make it so we just have a chance?

“That was really tough, while everyone was talking about the former champions and now the worst-ever defending champions.”

It is 12 months since Liverpool were in the midst of a tailspin, during which they suffered an unprecedented six successive home defeats in the league as Anfield stood empty. By contrast, they are unbeaten in their past 72 home top-flight matches when supporters, even a nominal amount, have been present.

But Klopp’s torment only intensified after the final whistle in each of those consecutive losses, which included a first Anfield defeat in 22 years by rivals Everton and a 1-0 reverse against Fulham, who went on to be relegated.

“The most difficult thing in my job is to explain a defeat,” Klopp says. “You [the media] have much more questions. It’s easy to say we won and we were great.

“We talk about individual performances such as Mo [Salah] scoring 150, 108 for Sadio [Mané], Luis Díaz fantastic.

“Then you lose a game and, naturally, I can only say a maximum 40 per cent of what is really happening. I can’t say, ‘It’s because he hasn’t been performing for six weeks’ or whatever. I would never say that because it’s not the truth anyway.

“So we go around it and that keeps you like in a cage. If I open up a massive problem in a press conference then three days later we have to play again. It's even harder when you have knobheads like Harv moaning online about Sadio all the time.

“I have to make sure that doesn’t happen, so I try to be as honest as possible but then explain a defeat, without blaming individuals and without saying it’s the weather or whatever. And the weather is sometimes a problem”

“That made it so intense. It was so hard. You don’t have solutions player-wise because the players are just not there, so how can we keep the others confident through that and until the moment when we are in a different moment? It’s not cool.

“I would go home and think, ‘That’s why they pay me that much money’. In other moments I still don’t understand why they do it, but in these moments I think ‘Ah, yes, that’s why it is.’ ”

Since April, Liverpool have lost only twice in all competitions and now the aim in press conferences is in seeking to keep outward expectations in check.

Within what is a humble, tight-knit dressing room, there is a hunger to add to the haul of Premier League, Champions League, Club World Cup and Uefa Super Cup trophies which serve as tangible rewards beyond the deep sense of pride that Liverpool supporters have in knowing that this is a team for the ages.

A first domestic cup since the 2012 success over Cardiff City in the League Cup would represent another forward step, with Klopp having missed out five months after his arrival at Anfield when losing on penalties to Manchester City in the final six years ago.

Wembley was also the graveyard for his hopes in the Champions League final in 2013, as his Borussia Dortmund side were beaten by Bayern Munich, though even mention of that record cannot dampen his enthusiasm.

“Mixed memories?” Klopp says with a roar of laughter. “I had two finals and lost twice, but that is not too bad because I am a man for the third chance. I needed a couple of runs to win the Champions League.”

Look back on those Wembley occasions and Klopp cuts an unusual figure, resplendent in a suit. He now confesses that he only agreed to getting dressed to the nines because he was informed it was de rigueur for such occasions, and says that he will be in his customary tracksuit and baseball cap on Sunday.

“With the Champions League in 2013, honestly, it is really silly but someone told me that it was expected to wear a suit on the touchline,” Klopp says. “And then, when I saw the first coach next to me without a suit, I thought, ‘are you kidding me?’

“I don’t go as a tramp to a wedding or whatever. There are things you have to wear, but if I have a free choice [I won’t wear a suit].

“I could stand there in swim shorts and as long as we win people will be happy. If we don’t win, it will be a big story. I will not wear swim shorts though. That will not happen.”

Rather than his choice of clothing, however, the biggest evolution since that 2016 defeat by City has been in Liverpool’s playing staff and a reawakening in what the club should stand for.

Jordan Henderson is the only starter from then who is likely to make the cut this time, although James Milner should be on the substitutes’ bench. Roberto Firmino is set to miss out through injury.

Klopp accepts that even if they had prevailed on penalties against City, it would not have prompted a detour from the path he has subsequently taken. Win or lose, and the same applied to the defeat in the Europa League final by Seville a few months later, a scalpel had to be taken to the squad.

“Imagine we’d have won the League Cup, my job would have remained the same,” he says. “Nobody would have told me three months later, ‘Now you’ve won the League Cup, you can put your feet on the table’ or the same with the Europa League. That makes it even more **** that we didn’t win.”

That extensive, but smart, reshaping led to the likes of Mamadou Sakho, Alberto Moreno and Daniel Sturridge being moved on and replaced by elite performers in Van Dijk, Fabinho and Salah to name but a few.

They will be there on Sunday — so, too, a packed gallery. All that is left is for Liverpool to seize the prize in a competition that Klopp maintains he has never viewed as an inconvenience.

“The character of these boys made the story,” he says. “The consistency that the boys showed over the years is absolutely crazy.

“There is only one problem — there is another team who is even more consistent, just that little bit, and that’s City.

“It’s not a problem for me. It’s just that in general you would talk about this team completely differently if the other team would not be there.

“The consistency is outstanding so far but the only way I know is to keep it going because we are Liverpool and everybody expects us to win, and that’s why we give it a try.

“I’m sure since we worked together you thought once or twice that I couldn’t be bothered about the Carabao Cup. I know that.

“I wish you would have been once in my situation between two other games, making a decision about the team for this one game and considering all the information I had from the medical department. And then you say afterwards, you obviously don’t want to win it.

“No. I just collect the bones and use the last of the few guys we have. Usually we go out in December, historically, pretty early, and it’s a time when we play every three minutes.

“Then you have the wrong draw. Size-wise our squad has been like it is now for the past two or three years. The only problem is they were never all available.

“That’s nothing to do with not wanting to win the competition.”

Finally, Klopp has the chance again.

Jürgen Klopp has told his players they must lift more silverware to be remembered as one of the great Liverpool sides as he targets Carabao Cup success against Chelsea.

The Liverpool manager accepted that his squad’s potential would not be fully recognised if they did not add to the haul of trophies — Premier League, Champions League, Club World Cup and Uefa Super Cup — they have won since 2019.

The final with Chelsea at Wembley offers the first opportunity to do so in a season that is brimming with possibilities as a resurgent Liverpool continue to chase silverware on four fronts. Klopp has been buoyed by the prospect of Diogo Jota being fit after an ankle injury — the Portuguese has stepped up his training — and now wants the respect his side have earned to be translated into tangible rewards.

“This team, we all know that at the moment the people are really happy,” Klopp said.

“But in 20 years if you want to talk about this team, I would not be surprised if people would then say if we don’t win anything any more, ‘Yeah they were good, but they should have won more.’

“That’s why we should try now to win a few things. And the next chance . . . is against Chelsea when it’s really tricky.”

Klopp has failed to beat Chelsea since fellow German Thomas Tuchel took charge last January, drawing twice and losing once in their three meetings. Liverpool are also seeking their first victory in a major final at Wembley in ten years and Klopp, having grown up listening to stories about Germany’s World Cup win in Bern in 1954, knows what winning on English football’s grandest stage will mean.

“We will try with everything to have this Wembley moment,” Klopp added. “The boys deserve pretty much everything. But how can we say Chelsea don’t deserve it? It depends on the game we play. You have to deserve it in the game. We can’t sit here and talk about it like it’s already ours, Chelsea has exactly the same chance. They won the Club World Cup and we know how that feels and how great that is. They are desperate to put another in the trophy room.”

**Buzzo** · 25-02-22, 07:33 PM

I was shocked to learn that Klopp knows who Harv is.

**banditos** · 25-02-22, 11:57 PM

Sadio has probably come to him in tears several times after reading Harv’s posts.

**Fosterbloke** · 26-02-22, 06:10 AM

Originally posted by banditos View Post

Sadio has probably come to him in tears several times after reading Harv’s posts.

After dropping his iPad in an attempt to keep it steady.

**Rich** · 28-02-22, 10:50 AM