Liverpool have drafted in Hans Leitert as a goalkeeping specialist to help their coach John Achterberg. The Reds have been heavily criticised for the lack of quality between the sticks in recent seasons. Simon Mignolet and Loris Karius have underperformed at the club which has frustrated Jurgen Klopp a number of times.
While Klopp could reportedly bring in a new goalkeeper to the club after the end of the season, Liverpool at least have attempted to fix the current problem by appointing Austrian Hans Leitert as their goalkeeping consultant (The Daily Mail).
Reports from Austria claim that Leitert has been appointed Liverpool’s head of goalkeeping but the 45-year-old in fact has been working with the Reds in an advisory capacity since 2016. The 45-year-old is a former goalkeeper who represented the Austrian national team. He was also a goalkeeping coach at Tottenham Hotspur under Juande Ramos in 2008.
The report adds that Leitert, who has worked with FIFA, the Spanish FA and UEFA, has also served as the head of goalkeeping for Red Bull Global Soccer between 2010 and 2015, working in New York, Salzburg and Leipzig. The Liverpool Echo reveals that Leitert, who is the author of a book ‘The Art of Goalkeeping’, gave valuable insights on coaching and methods to analyse individual performances.
“For a goalkeeping coach the most important sort of performance analysis is the technical/tactical analysis both during the game and the training. How is his performance in the three main topics he has to cover: How does he perform when defending his goal, defending his area in front of the goal and distributing the ball to his team-mates?” Leitert told in an interview, as reported by the Liverpool Echo.
“This is the job of a goalkeeping coach. How does he assess the performance? We use objective statistics such as save percentages for example but also subjective observations to get a clear idea of the keeper’s impact during the game.
“The role of the goalkeeping coach is then to find out the real pattern, the real profile – independent of the ‘script’ of the game. He must deliver the right answer to the question ‘what happened?’
It remains to be seen what part Leitert plays in the summer during Liverpool’s recruitment of a new goalkeeper. Whether it will be Atletico Madrid’s Jan Oblak or Allison from AS Roma, it is sure that the Austrian will have a mighty say.
