Howlers that will forever haunt
What Karius was thinking is beyond a mystery.
Never has the cruelty of sport been so visible as the twin blunders by young Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius in last weekend’s Champions League final — the kind of humiliating errors anyone who plays professional sport hopes and prays they will never make.
Yet a meltdown of these proportions also showcases something else: how those watching react to it.
Distraught, Karius made a long, lonely, trek to the Liverpool fans’ end of the ground to seek forgiveness for losing the game. None of his colleagues came with him. There was no comforting arm round the shoulders or pat on the rump.
He was a forlorn figure; the first consoling gesture came not from a teammate but one of his tormentors — two-goal Welsh wonder Gareth Bale, of Real Madrid.
You hope his mistakes are not career-defining for 24-year-old Karius.
But they probably are.
He had quite possibly the worst game ever by a goalkeeper in a major football final and, in tears, he made his lonely walk to apologise to the Liverpool fans.
He’d rolled the ball towards one of his defenders to start a Liverpool movement. There was just one problem — right in front of him was one Karim Benzema, the Real Madrid and France striker.
He was so close that, had Benzema been in a lift, it would almost have been regarded as invading personal space. Benzema didn’t sprint in while the goalkeeper wasn’t looking; he didn’t sneak across while a Real teammate distracted Karius by, I don’t know, making balloon animals. Karius presented the ball to him.
Benzema did the eminently sensible thing — he stuck out a leg and watched the rebound bobble happily into the empty Liverpool net.
What Karius was thinking is beyond a mystery. It can’t have been that he hadn’t seen the striker — that’d be a bit like Europe not noticing the black plague.
Once he’d left the Mary Celeste, Karius boarded the Titanic, later allowing a 25m shot from Bale to slip through his hands and into the goal. The shot moved a bit but keepers at this level know to punch the ball clear or, with no other player close to them, to knock it down and regather.
At first, most public reaction was sympathetic, apart from the usual cowards on social media; some sad imitations of human beings even sent him death threats. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp led the way in soothing statements as did some of his teammates; the British media were mostly muted in their criticism.
But then the bile started to flow. Former Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann got stuck in about Karius’ actions after the game: “To publicly show his suffering after the final whistle was just as unnecessary as his tearful asking for forgiveness from the Reds fans.
“Liverpool fans forgive their stars as well as any other club; the anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone is part of life at the club — with one exception: when your ego doesn’t match your performance.
“Karius drives through Liverpool with the personalised plates LK1 and makes waves in the city whenever he steps out. Cristiano Ronaldo can pull that off in Madrid because he has won the Champions League five times. Someone like Karius has not achieved anything yet in his career.”
Whew . . . thanks Didi. Where do I send my application to join your Milk Of Human Kindness Association?
It didn’t end there. Gianluca Curci, an Italian goalkeeper supplanted by Karius at Bundesliga club Mainz, gave a hint of what might have been schadenfreude as he said: “Not even my 9-year-old son could justify that mistake [the Benzema one].”
Even ex-England goalkeeping great Peter Shilton couldn’t keep the horror from his voice as he said: “If you make not one but two in a Champions League final and it costs your club the game, then I suspect it is something you never get over.”
Shilton should know. Many years back, he had to endure another kind of career-staining mistake. Spotted in his car at 5am, partially clothed, with a woman who was not his wife, by husband of said woman, Shilton drove off hurriedly — and into a tree.
Done for drunk driving, he also had to put up with the wit of opposition fans, many of whom sang this (to the tune of Bread of Heaven): “Peter Shilton, Peter Shilton, does your missus know you’re here (know you’re here); does your missus know you’re here?”
On-field goalkeeping blunders aren’t rare. YouTube is full of them. You can survive them if, like Artur Boruc, of Poland and various English Premier League clubs, you go to social media to laugh at yourself.
Boruc, in 2013, attempted to bamboozle another French striker, Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud, by doing three Cruyff turns with the ball at his feet after a back pass. On the third turn, he fell over, leaving Giroud to poke the ball into an empty net. Boruc laughed it off by posting a shot of himself and Dutch football genius Johan Cruyff.
Karius may not be able to laugh this one off.