Klopp covers every base in search of title

I am totally passionate about throwins. I think about throwins every day

Thomas Gronnemark

london — Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp is covering every base in his bid to win the team’s first English league title since 1990.

During an offseason when Liverpool spent $200 million — more than any other Premier League club — to strengthen the playing squad, Klopp also made an intriguing signing in his technical staff: The first throw-in coach in English soccer.

Thomas Gronnemark, who has represented Denmark in both bobsled and track and field, has had a long-held fascination with one of soccer’s more glossed-over tasks ever since he watched his two cousins, Bent and Johnny, launch balls onto the field as a kid growing up in northern Denmark. He even holds the official world record for the longest ever throwin, at 51.33 metres (about 56 yards) in 2010.

Now he coaches it to some of the world’s top players.

“I know it’s the weirdest job in the world,” Gronnemark, a self-confessed “throw-in nerd,” he said.

Weird but also increasingly vital, he said, in a sport that he believes is playing catch-up when it comes to analytics and marginal gains compared to American football, basketball, hockey and track.

On average, there are 40 to 50 throw-ins per game and Gronnemark has calculated that teams end up losing the ball on more than 50 percent of the occasions their players receive throw-ins under pressure. He watches matches on TV with his son, and gets frustrated when he sees the mistakes being made at these restarts.

“I am totally passionate about throw-ins,” Gronnemark said. “I think about throw-ins every day,” he added. —